Cowslips

...or is it collieslips?

I must apologise to Gus's admirers in Blipland that he has been absent from here for over three weeks. So here he is in the drizzle at Heathwaite on Arnside Knott, in the cowslip field which is in its glory at the moment. He's waiting for the word to come and get his reward for staying in one place long enough for me to raise and point the camera.

This field is lovely throughout the flowering season as the cowslips are replaced by spotted orchids, dropwort, and rockrose. And this is one of the best sites on the Knott for the northern brown argus butterfly and other Lepidopteran delights. So we shall be coming back here at regular intervals through Spring and Summer. Someone told me that before the National Trust acquired this part of the Knott, a farmer kept pigs on this field. That maybe explains why it is so different to any of the other grasslands, though I might have expected the field to be less rich botanically.

The weather was not as bad today as we feared, Gus and I are about to go for our evening walk along the estuary and it is not raining. All of the Cairngorm backblips are now on.