A woodland walk

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 Today was the first warm sunny day since the recent hot spell so I took the opportunity to visit Monks Wood in the hope of finding the elusive black hairstreaks low enough to photograph.  It was 10 am and warming up when I parked up and made my way along the grassy path to the entrance and it was here I saw my first meadow browns of the year.    I knew where to look for the hairstreaks  having been given specific instructions from a facebook friend and when I saw a man bending down taking photographs I hurried my steps to see if he had found any... "no" he replied. 

I then retraced my steps to go to another area and as I was looking about, two gentlemen and a lady arrived also looking.   We all spotted a few flying up high but as before none came down low enough,  I was told that the females normally come down first followed by the males but it might still be too early in the day or they were at the end of their flight season.  When I mentioned that I had also looked at Brampton Wood, the lady said to me "are you Karen?"  Somewhat surprised, I replied yes and she said she was Rosalyn, the person who had given me the details of where to look!   It was nice to put a face to someone I had been messaging for some months now! One of the men was also someone who regularly posted on the local facebook and website pages whose name I recognised,

We all decided to follow another path and see if we could find any more, it was nice to explore part of the wood I had not been to before and in the company of fellow butterfly spotters, who were quite a bit more knowledgeable then myself  Sadly we didnt see any hairstreaks suitable for photographs although I did see some large skippers which I hadnt seen before this year.

We then parted company and I walked back to the wood entrance with the second gentleman who told me he had only 7 more butterflies to see on the British list including the Irish wood white, large blue and swallowtail.  He had a large garden with woodland and meadow that he had made butterfly friendly so I told him about our farm and nature reserve ideas.

I then drove the short distance to Woodwalton Marsh to see if there was anything interesting there and a gentleman who was there showed me a photo he had taken of a grizzled skipper and said he had seen one marbled white butterfly fly into the distance. I didnt have to time to stop long so just did a quick walk part of the way round the two acre site before making my way home.

 


 
large skipper

 

meadow brown
 

small tortoiseshell

speckled wood




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