Thursday 19 July 2012

In Hope

A rare taste of something convincingly like sunshine and warmth this morning had me looking about me with renewed hope as I strolled to the station. When something smallish and brownish fluttered up from the Traveller's Joy beside the path, my heart leapt, as it looked very like being my first Gatekeeper of the year. However, when it settled on a leaf, I realised the markings were wrong - not nearly enough tawny orange on the wings, not enough in the way of beady little eyes around the margins. No, it was an undersized Meadow Brown - one of the few species to be seen at all regularly over recent weeks, along with gratifying numbers of those dark beauties, the Ringlets. I think conditions have been so harsh this dreadful summer that they're stunting the growth of many of our butterflies. In fact, that might explain why I seem to have seen so few Large Whites, relative to Small Whites - perhaps some of those Smalls are in fact undersized Larges. It's a funny old butterfly year.

8 comments:

  1. Im not seeing any winged insects at all! troubling times

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  2. Troubling indeed, Worm - but at least the swifts and swallows and martins are finding enough to live on, so they must be there somewhere...

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  3. Plenty of rats up from the full sewers though, eh? Had one behind the sofa today, which I chased, cornered and smote. Thankfully an opportunistic visitor rather than an infestation or so the rat catcher reckoned.

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  4. Enterprising blighters, rats - they send out scouts, don't they? And we smite them...

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  5. I do think rats are rather wonderful creatures. I have a lot of respect for them. I'm glad they're not as big as us though!

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  6. They'd eat us if they were - and they're not alone in that...

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