Copper

I drove over to Oxfordshire this morning, to look for Silver-spotted Skippers and Adonis Blues on Watlington Hill. I found some Skippers, along with a few Small Heath and a gazillion Brown Argus and Common Blues, but no Adonis. Back at the car, I looked at my map app and realised that Aston Rowant NNR was less than four miles away, so I swung round there to see if I could improve my species count for the day. 

Yomping along the exposed ridge, high above the M40, I thought it was probably too windy for small butterflies, but then the sun came out and the west-facing slope began to bake, and suddenly they were everywhere. My second photo tonight is a Silver spotted Skipper that I spotted basking on the path in front of me, just in time to skid to a halt and avoid bumping into it. It's not a great image because the path is not only unattractive but also narrow and slightly sunken, with a tall verge on the side from which I needed to shoot, so I couldn't get into a position from which I could achieve really good focus on the butterfly; but at least it records the encounter.

As well as the Silver-spotted Skipper the ridge provided a few Adonis Blues, and having ticked off both the species I'd set out to find, I decided to call it a day. I was wandering quite happily back towards the car when I caught sight of a distinctive gleam of silvery blue, and suddenly found myself chasing after a couple of Chalk Hill Blues. This is a species I normally go to Prestbury Hill to photograph, but I haven't seen one since before the pandemic, and I thought I'd missed them again this year, so I was especially pleased to come across some today. And then Aston Rowant popped a cherry on top of the cake it had just iced: a distracting blob of orange turned up in the background of some of my Chalk Hill Blue photos, and turned out to be this very fresh and pretty second brood Small Copper.

Having set out in search of two species this morning, I'm pretty smug to have come home with four to add to my butterfly list for the year.