meadowsweet is coming out everywhere now, and with valerian and honeysuckle, fills the byways with the heavy scent of summer. Do you long for the times when the only air freshener was a stack of meadowsweet, and a hot dog?
It has been a very good year for foxgloves. The hedgerows are full of them. We have moved on from blue to purple and mauve.
a patch of marsh (probably as this is wet grassland) or lesser stitchwort looking like the stars they are named for (stellaria). With a few blue stars
only (!) a meadow brown, but they are very frisky and getting close when surrounded by inquisitive canines requires patience and dogged determination
one female chaffinch, slightly stunned, the perfect English rose, clematis, and the head of borage about to flower, the leaves of which with Pimms, strawberries and tennis minus rain will go to make a perfect English summer.
this is a female long horn moth (species Nemophora degeerella). I only know this because there is a wonderful site full of British moths at this link. What I like is that you can type in colours and a feature (eg brown yellow bar) and up pops some likely candidates. Common in the South of England apparently. And below (so I can give the equivalent butterfly link) one of the many speckled wood butterflies flying around today.
It was a very clear day, and this photo shows the Tamar valley (very flattened by the perspective), and in view are the villages of Luckett, Sydenham Damerel, Milton Abbot, Horsebridge, Townlake and Tutwell, and in the far distance the hills of Dartmoor looking towards Okehampton.
nearby and for the first time on Kit Hill, we found some orchids. They look like southern marsh orchids (having no spots on the leaves and two sepals that look like bird's wings) but these orchids often hybridise with heath spotted and common spotted orchid. However, they were by a marsh!
and a much less gaudy moth extremely well disguised as a leaf.It is very difficult to identify but it could be a common rustic or a pale mottled willow moth (on the grounds that common things are common).
a rather faded painted lady ... apparently they have been arriving in great clouds blown in from North Africa on warm winds from the South. No wonder they look a bit jaded. Once again they have arrived at the same time as ragged robin is out (see link from 2006). There are hundreds of them around. How do they get back to Africa?
the fourth orchid of the day, the southern marsh orchid, and below, a close up of the very small but very beautiful eyebright. We are working hard on these close ups to keep up with our friends in the USA.
who, following introductions,
clambered over each other; it is not clear who is going to be whose breakfast. I think the coloured spider in the top photo may be the male of the white species (which may be a crab spider (see link)) and he is taking avoiding action before he is eaten.
the lesser butterfly orchid, iridescent in the morning sun. There were also some greater butterfly orchids in the meadow but they are not yet in flower.
