Being watched

It was cool, rainy and mostly dull today for our work party at the nature reserve. We carried out some ragwort pulling and thistle cutting, then collected seed from some of the early flowering chalk grassland species to scatter in the chalk scrapes on our ex-arable fields. Butterflies were mostly roosting, coming to life every now and then when there was a brief sunny period. At one point, when I was on my knees tugging at a fiercely determined clump of ragwort, I looked up... straight into the eyes of a Small Skipper roosting on a knapweed flower. I tugged at my pocket for my camera, but didn't need to panic - the butterfly was going nowhere until the sun shone again.