Blue wings

Monday was a horribly dreary and wet day, and I'm afraid that I didn't feel even the slightest bit motivated to get my camera out. Today the weather was much better, ending up with glorious warm sunshine, which was just as well as we were out surveying again.

Mind you, it took us an age to get to our site, thanks to poor signage. As we arrived at out turn down to Woodwalton Church End there was a 'Road Closed' sign, so we duly followed the very long diversion round a large part of Huntingdonshire only to find a matching 'Road Closed' sign at the other end. Much cursing ensued as we retraced our route, ignored the original sign and finally reached our site. They should have made it clear that the road was only closed to through traffic!

We had a successful day, but as usual, there was little time to spare, and I had to try and ignore the clouds of Peacock, Red Admiral and Painted Lady butterflies that were around, although they were all pretty skittish anyway.On our way home we briefly dropped into Woodwalton Marsh NR (which was also supposedly closed for grazing, though there were no animals on site) where the butterflies were better behaved. 

There had obviously been a recent emergence of Common Blues, and we saw a number of males mostly sitting on Knapweed flower-heads, but occasionally engaging in aerial battles if another male came too near. This one was particularly obliging, and after getting a few shots of its closed under-wings, it opened its wings to expose the true blue glory of its pristine upper-wings, which are just dazzling when viewed large.

It was also a good day for Alex. He gave a presentation on his traineeship to the senior management team at Froglife, and, although he was quite nervous and hadn't slept much the previous night, it went very well. The only downside is it was so good that he may have to give it again to the project sponsors!