Howe Ridding

It was a great sunny morning and we couldn’t resist walking our first butterfly transects of the year. On the top of Whitbarrow we spotted some orange underwing moths, a bit of a specialty.
Howe Ridding is more sheltered and warmer, there were brimstone , peacock, comma and several bumblebees.
The willow trees were in full flower and this one had three commas chasing each other around the branches, something I hadn’t seen before. It shows you the value of leaving these trees to come to maturity, they tend to be removed as weeds from our gardens as they do seed themselves down.