It’s a breezy day, overcast but with some breaks in the cloud.
There are some butterflies like Gatekeepers and Red Admirals which are the supermodels of the butterfly world. They land, open their wings and practically ask to be photographed. The Common Blue is not one of those. They hardly stop at all and when they do it’s only for a second before they are on the move again.
One of our fields gets overgrown at this time of year but it attracts many insects. There is a lot of Knapweed which is very popular with pollinating insects so I spent an hour or so this afternoon in between rain showers taking some pictures.
There are thousands of Gatekeeper Butterflies around at the moment. Apologies for so many pictures of them. I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
Lots of Bumble Bees too but I find identifying them quite hard. Males, Queens and workers are all different and there is quite a lot of variation even in the same species.
Musk Mallow
Musk Mallow is quite a big pink flower and we find it growing here and there in the pastureland.
Cut Leaf Cranesbill
This is a tiny but very vivid purple flower which I haven’t seen before but it is hard to spot in the long grass vivid so it may have been there all along and I just haven’t noticed it. It’s part of the large Geranium family and there are several common species so I hope I’ve identified it correctly.
We are quite excited to find that we have a hornets nest in the rotten window frame of one of our outbuildings.
A while ago I posted some pictures of what I thought were Cinquefoil but now I’m not so sure. These two plants are very similar. The main difference being that Cinquefoil flowers usually have 5 petals and Tormentil has four. So today I found lots of four petalled flowers which I think must be Tormentil, except that there were some five petalled flowers among them. Otherwise they have the same trailing habit through the grass and the same leaves. So I think I’ll call this one Tormentil.
Yarrow
Betony
We have two similar but related plants, Betony and Self Heal. Self Heal is not fully out yet and this here is Betony. Betony is the more showy of the two.
I tried to find this moth but all I could come up with are the Forester moth and Scarce Forester moth. It looks very like those moths except that they are green although in one reference it says that the wings may appear rusty red early morning and evening. It flies in the daytime during June and July. It also says that the Scarce Forester moth feeds on Salad Burnet and Knapweed of which we have an abundance in this field. Some more research required.
Having now researched this I now think that this is some kind of Burnett Moth. Possibly the Transparent Burnett moth. The club-like antennae is an indication.
Common Centaury
Field Scabious
We’ve been here 25 years and this Field Scabious has flowered every year but it has never spread further than this little patch. There were lots of insects around and I couldn’t stop taking pictures. Every flower had a shiny green bug called a False Oil Beetle on it.
Shropshire Wild Flowers 