Purple menace...

It's been a long, long day...

Up early as our computer man was scheduled to visit at about 7.30am, so that we could still fit in a full days fieldwork. Occasionally my computer's been switching itself off when exporting large quantities of files from Lightroom, so he's increased the rate of the fan and tweaked the Bios to try and prevent this. Just as he was about to leave, the contents of our new bathroom were delivered, so we waited to oversee that. I can't believe it's going to be installed next week!

We finally arrived on site just after 10.30 and then spent another eight hours walking round, although luckily there was a fair amount of cloud cover which kept temperatures tolerable. Our site is a railway marshalling yard, and locally there are lots of buddleia bushes. These heavily scented ornamental shrubs are a popular nectar source for insects, but they can also be a conservation nightmare, as their windblown seeds spread widely and areas of valuable grassland habitat can quickly turn into buddleia forests unless the grassland is regularly managed by grazing or mowing. Considerable effort is made (at some expense) to keep the buddleia population under control, but every year there seem to be at least as many bushes. There is a very interesting article about the issues associated with this species in the BBC Magazine.