Marmoris 2

After a beautiful start, the weather soon deteriorated to persistent light rain. I left the house fairly early and managed to get to Barnack Hills and Holes as a front moved in from the north, providing some gently cloud-filtered sunshine. The grassland was a picture, with troops of magenta-pink pyramidal orchids surrounded by swathes of yellow rock-rose, bird's-foot-trefoil and hairy hawkbit. And in an area cleared of scrub a few years ago there were several plants of deadly nightshade (I thought of you Ceridwen) as well as a magnificent stand of dark mullein.

Early morning is a particularly good time to see marbled white butterflies, as they warm up with wings held open absorbing the sun's rays. This species can be quite conspicuous, even from a distance, as it may be the only white object among the grassland. At good sites it is not uncommon to see a flower head containing several adults all vying for space as they feed. When the weather is dull, and at night, the adults will rest on grass stems, as well as the flowerheads of any of their nectar sources, such as this field scabious. This female was particularly obliging, probably because she was still quite cold, and let me take a number of shots before she finally fluttered away.

This afternoon I updated our garden survey list, which now has over 770 species. I also entered all the data from yesterday's survey and was pleased to note that I've now recorded over 370 plant species from my local tetrad - pretty good for a suburban area just a mile from the centre of Peterborough.