karen's country calendar

The first sunny warm day for some time so I took the opportunity of visiting Brampton Wood in the hope of perhaps seeing the last black hairstreaks of the season and a few new butterflies for this years list. I soon got into conversation with someone just coming away and he told me what he had seen today althougt sadly no hairstreaks but I was still hopeful of seeing other species. Sites 1 and 2 clearly marked along the main ride were the main hot spots for hairstreaks so this was where I aimed for first.   I was glad of the signs as I would never have been able to find my way through the narrow paths amongst the blackthorn.  I found the sites and waited a while but no movement, then suddenly a small brown butterfly flew and landed in a bush a short distance away but difficult to see clearly amongst the twigs and leaves.  Before I could get my binoculars focussed it flew off and I didn't find it again but it was the right size, in the right place and with what I think were the 

Although the weather didn't look that great for butterfly spotting, we hoped that the sun would break through later and in any case the temperature was quite warm already as we left to visit a new nature reserve and butterfly trail. We found the reserve in the end although it would have helped if either my sat nav or road atlas actually recognised the new 11A junction on the M1! College Lake is a former quarry and we were quite surprised when we looked out the visitor centre window and found we were looking right down on top of the whole area!   Various ducks and geese were evident together with terns, and a few waders. We took the circular walk and unexpectedly came across a patch of grass and trefoil where we found large numbers of small blue butterflies, a few common blues and brown argus too ... and the sun wasn't even out!  The sky seemed to brighten a bit from time  but there weren't many other butterflies about except for a brimstone or two. We did see a couple