Gatekeepers

The (excellent) decorator who's currently painting the outside of our house was using a cherry picker today, to get him safely up to the chimneys, and needed to run a generator at regular intervals to power it. After a while the noise of this outside my open study window became unbearable, so I went out into the back garden for a bug rummage and some peace and quiet. Quarter of an hour into my quiet and peaceful bug rummage, our next-door neighbour started using a chain saw, and I started using some very ungracious language.

I try to not to be a prima donna about it, but my left ear was damaged many years ago by an infection, and I still find some noises physically painful. If they go on too long, I can even end up feeling nauseous and slightly dizzy, and that's what happened today. I wasn't in the mood for road tripping, so when the situation became intolerable I just took the cameras and walked down the lane to Tilly's field, which was far enough away from all the noise for me to be able to ignore it.

At this point the Department of Serendipity stepped in, and the morning took a turn for the better. Had I not stomped out of the house at the exact moment I did, I wouldn't have been standing in this precise spot when these Gatekeepers swooped in and landed, and if I hadn't seen them arrive it's entirely possible that I'd have walked past and not noticed them at all. It took a long time and a lot of shutter clicks to find the angle that put both butterflies in focus, but luckily Gatekeepers mate for an hour, and by the time I had a set of shots I was happy with, I'd virtually forgotten my ear.

The only thing I don't like about this photo is the perch selected by the male. In a perfect world it would be a gate, obviously, and I have a little fantasy that he chose it because that's what he thought it was, but it's actually a bent and ratty section of railing, looking a bit like a hitching post, that stands just inside the entrance gate to the meadow. I know people who I'm sure would have attempted to move the butterflies onto a more photogenic surface, but I'm not that photographer, and nor do I want to be. I also know people who would at least have gone to the trouble of 'shopping out the ugly splinter at the top of the frame - but apparently I'm not that photographer either.