Small

The weather was so dreary this morning that I didn't bother even trying to go out looking for subjects, instead concentrating on trying to clear some of my backlog of unprocessed photo files, while waiting for the day to brighten, as the forecast promised that it would. In the event the improvement in the light happened so late that I'd already given up waiting: I stomped out into the gloom at around 3.30, out of fear that I might not get any photos at all, and everything I shot therefore suffered the grainy consequences of me not having held my nerve and waited. On the other hand, at least a couple of my subjects were flighty, and if I had waited I might well have missed them altogether, so swings and roundabouts.

The afternoon's finds improved my bee list by one, and my butterfly list by two. The bee was Melitta haemorrhoidalis, a solitary species I've never recorded before, which forages exclusively on campanula. The female I spotted was doing exactly this in the front garden as I was setting off out for my photo walk, and held me up for about quarter of an hour, as I attempted to track her to rest and secure some photos.

Having finally managed some identifiable record shots of the bee, I walked just another couple of hundred metres along the lane before being stopped again, this time by several butterflies and a moth that were all fluttering around the entrance to Tilly's field. Among them were several Small Skippers and (I think) an Essex Skipper, which took my butterfly list for the year to twenty eight species - not a great tally, but not a bad one either, given how little effort I've put into butterfly hunting so far this summer. I'm slightly hesitant about the Essex Skipper because I didn't manage the best view of the single specimen I saw, and I might be fooling myself into thinking that its antennae were tipped with black - but I do record Essex Skippers in this field most years, so it's quite likely that my identification is correct. I'll run it past the county recorders in due course, and see what verdict they give.

Both the Melitta haemorrhoidalis and the putative Essex Skipper appear in a post I've added to my Facebook page tonight, if you'd care to see them. Both the Skippers and the Burnet moth were photographed on a large clump of black horehound (Ballota nigra), which has established itself this summer on the crumbling wall dividing Tilly's field from the road verge. Given its popularity with a range of nectar feeders, I think that this plant would make an excellent addition to our wild garden, so I've added it to the list of seeds I intend to buy - though I see that it has a reputation for smelling foul, which won't make it equally popular with R. I can't say I noticed an unpleasant odour while I was rummaging around in this clump today, though that may be due to the large drift of lady's bedstraw (Galium verum) that was growing around its base, the sweet scent of which was almost overpowering.


For the record tonight: Government crumbling; Ministers resigning; champagne chilling.