Green hairstreak

Pete and I spent a wonderful day at the Wildlife Trust's Totternhoe Reserve, my first full day of fieldwork since I injured my back. I'm doing a vegetation survey of the area, and wanted to have an initial walk round to familiarise myself with it, so that I can plan further visits in mid-summer.

Although there was a cool breeze, the sun shone, and it was quite cosy in sheltered corners. We saw thirteen species of butterfly including plenty of small blues and dingy skippers, and a scatter of grizzled skippers and green hairstreaks. The latter are one of my favourite butterflies - such an amazing colour - and quite tricky to photograph as they are generally very alert and skittish. Unfortunately we didn't manage to see any Duke of Burgundy, which is one of the jewels of the area. Possibly we were a bit late in the season, but we saw lots of potential habitat to visit next year.

The flowers were also rather special - lots of horseshoe vetch, sainfoin, common milkwort, thyme and bird's-foot-trefoil. And I've never seen so many twayblades - just everywhere!

So I seem to have survived the day, with the help of my painkillers, despite walking considerably further than I'd planned, up and down moderately steep slopes. I just hope that it doesn't all catch up with me later!!