Seed-heads of Bog Asphodel, Meathop Moss

There are damselflies, dragonflies, and small tortoiseshell settle on the boardwalk and we glimpse lizard. The walkway is raised above the moss, protecting its flora and fauna from trampling feet and keeping us clear of ticks, of adder and of hidden trenches cut deep into the peat.
Osprey, reads a road sign, when the birds are here through the breeding season.  Yes, they're a main attraction but there's so much more to Foulshaw and Meathop Moss. I love this transition of late summer into autumn.  Autumn colour isn't only found in woodland, it's wondrous in the mosses. 

Juvenile osprey bound for southern Spain, Portugal, or west Africa

Young osprey are nurtured by their parents and protected by Cumbria Wildlife Trust at Foulshaw Moss. Their nest-platform is visible, but inaccessible.  Only a fool would venture onto the moss without a detailed knowledge of safe ways amongst deep trenches, once made by peat cutters, now water-logged and overgrown with heather and sphagnum moss.  A few timbers mark the site of a peat cutter's shed. Close by, white butterflies flit over purple heather mingling with leaf-green  bog myrtle.
We're just in time. The adult female osprey recently set off on migration. Adult males and young birds will leave within a few days.  Alone,  they go alone. The young birds are fledged and will have learnt to fish in rivers debouching into Morecambe Bay, and in the Kent Estuary. Fish-hawk, river hawk, sea-hawk, a fishing osprey is an impressive sight and Shakespeare held them 'sovereign' as if they dazzle their prey and conjure fish into their grasp.  They'll need that skill.  Possibly only 2/6 birds will reach their destination in the south of the Iberian peninsula, and West Africa.  Lost, simply lost. All birds are ringed but not radio-tagged so if they fail they'll disappear. 
 Coriolanus Act 4 scene 7     Aufidius says of Coriolanus
I think he'll be to Rome,
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature 

In The Cockleshell Heroes, Helena Bonham-Carter narrates the story of a  WWWII commando raid on German ships in the port of Bordeaux in occupied France. Ships are damaged and destroyed  but five of the six British canoes are lost without trace. 
The Wife of Usher's Well is a traditional ballad where a 'carline wife' who may have supernatural powers, sends her three 'stout and stalwart' sons to sea. Believed lost, they return in the dark of November, at Martinmas, wearing hats of birch which grows only at 'the gates of Paradise.' It's a ghostly visitation. 

It's a chiaroscuro day of darkness and light at Foulshaw Moss.  One moment the purple heather and green leaves of bog myrtle are illuminated,  then  plunged into sudden gloom. I wonder how this hottest summer on record has affected the flora of the moss.  I see no cotton grass and little cross-leaved heath.  Some plants will be resilient in a summer drought, others will struggle.  If cranberries are ripening they're well hidden in sphagnum moss.  
​Bog myrtle has clusters of green nutlets but most shrubs are showing scaly catkins, already formed to overwinter until they flower next April.  
Heather flowers are tinged with autumn bronze as the osprey prepare to leave.  Fare well sea-hawks, see you next spring. 

Flights of house martin about the tower at Sizergh Castle

A house martin spectacular is a highlight this week-end at Sizergh Castle.  The air is filled with their calls as they swoop toward the tower, and away again in a rush.  Such an abundance comes out of the blue. I always follow their progress through the breeding season, studying their behaviour. The south-facing windows of the tower have neatly sculpted nests tucked into upper corners,  affording shade in summer heat-waves. I'd seen only a small number of birds so far this year but suddenly there are hundreds.  Interpreting the scene is a challenge  I'll consult my friend Jeff Holmes, a life-time birder and naturalist. He's keen-eyed and expert. This summer he's appearing on Get Birding with Sean Bean, on the Avalon marshes.
'I could stay here and listen to them all day,' says someone watching house martins at Sizergh. 'Just to listen.'
House martin are small and agile birds and the greatest number go for the highest window. For the first time this summer I'm in the aura of house martins  and it's sensational. Later, there's the forensics involved in interpreting images with detail caught in a moment of flight and teased out  of shadows and reflections.
I came for the butterflies and there's another humming bird hawk moth amongst painted ladies, small tortoiseshell and whites, but all the while  house martins are calling in flight about the tower and I'm drawn back again and again. 

Birds are flying to their nests, 'a second brood' someone suggests, and it seems probable.  Glass below the nests is splashed with droppings, with a thick impasto on window sills.  Some birds fly to the nests but others cling to the masonry of the solar.  My images show birds adorning the head of the window tracery  and they must have fledged and be trying out their flight skills  because (through an image sequence) there are no birds, then they appear.  Others  show as tiny black and white bodies crammed into a crevice below the lead drip-mould above the window. So birds are from different broods, some still being fed by adults flying in with insects. 
They'll be mustering, soon to depart on migration. And house martins from other sites will arrive,  speculating on possible breeding sites for next year. So Jeff tells me.  This heat-wave summer has been good for insects. The colony is a complex and growing gathering. 
Friends who volunteer here tell me they see no birds on 25th August, so has migration begun?  
Photographing house martin about the highest window of the tower gives me a crick in the neck, so an interlude with butterflies along the terrace is a diversion. This is a great summer for painted ladies and I've taken so many photographs I know the composition I'd like- a butterfly on verbena against the sharp green of vine leaves on the terrace wall. 

In the kitchen garden, the hungry caterpillars of small whites and large whites are devouring cabbage leaves. Whites are the most abundant butterflies.  A female brimstone appears on flowers of the nearby herbaceous border, her  wings, leaf-shaped and veined,  are perfect camouflage.  Sometimes they're translucent,  shot through with light and leaf-green. I've seen few brimstone or comma this year. Perhaps, when sedum flowers, comma will appear late in the summer.

One morning, there's a silence and the swifts are gone.  I wonder if the house martins about Sizergh Castle are gone too. Editing images,  I discover unusual perspectives on birds in flight with others crouching about the masonry. A fascinating week-end studying the colony and trying to interpret what we saw.  
My blog of 2nd September 2023 is  witness to a muster of house martins about the tower.  The weather that summer had been very different and the birds were gathering, not visiting their nests.  Swallows had nested high within an archway of the castle facade,  an old nest with no sign of swallows.
18 September 2026
House martin were feeding high, over Maud's Meadow and above Queen's Road, on a drizzly September day. I wonder if they're still seen at Sizergh.

Cattle grazing the salt marsh

Over Jubilee Bridge onto Walney Island the pace of life slows and slows as a single-track road winds about the island. The morning skyscape has intricate patterns of cloud,  white on blue. A few flowers and a greyish blue haze infer it's the season of sea-lavender and sea-aster but the salt marsh is dimly lit, ethereal light in the sky above.  The scene has the tranquillity and timelessness of a Constable painting- through shingle to salt marsh grazed by cows and  calves with Piel Castle in the distance.  A rural idyll. Sensing an incoming tide,  the cattle head for the shore, wading through channels in the salt marsh, a cool immersion as the temperature rises on a heat-wave day that will peak at 28 degrees by the afternoon.

Ringed plover forage along the shoreline, some twenty or more, and amongst them a dunlin. The day is still, with breaking wavelets of the incoming tide. A single eider swims out in the channel,  dark in eclipse plumage.  
In the foreground, tiny ringed plover on the shoreline, then cattle grazing on islets in a network of channels through the salt marsh, Piel Channel and the distant castle.  Delicate patterns of white cloud are transient and by the time we reached Coastguard Cottages that glorious cloudscape is gone. 

 Viper's bugloss is in flower with the last  few yellow horned poppies but successive heat-waves have blasted the flora. (today at 28 degrees is the fifth heat-wave of the summer) I search and search for viola tricolor which has a long flowering period, and find none.  South Walney is the driest place in Cumbria, we are reminded by a volunteer on the island.
Sandwich tern are present and I'd hoped we might find them from Peggy Braithwaite hide. All along the far shore there are oystercatcher and a mix of gulls. A couple of seals swim off the point until a small boat appears and the birds take flight.
From the track, the maritime flora of the mud-flats looks insignificant and, on closer view, it seems heat-stressed too.  Sea-lavender, salicornia and sea purslane are here but they're stressed by successive  heat-waves and drought. 
Swallows swoop low as they feed over  pools approaching  Groyne Hide. But it's gone.  Only the concrete base and piles of timber neatly stacked. ​

Sunlight gleams off a calm sea as we head for Sea Hide.  There's one large Greater mullein and numerous thistles, all gone to seed.  Some ragwort flowers, but little else. Grass burnt to a crisp crunches under my feet. Marram grass in the sand dunes seems resilient.  It's after noon and hot with only an occasional hint of breeze, not the forecast 'light winds.'  Two men are settled to sea-watch and welcome us to join them in the hide.  They often come here birding and love South Walney, as we do.  With telescopes, they've picked up the Manx shearwater but they were far out and are gone.  I hear Sandwich tern and glimpse them flying to a backdrop of wind turbines (a forlorn hope on a still day). Once, the men found a Great Northern Diver.  In hearing of rarities we neglect what's before us until my friend points out waders scurrying along a shoreline of breaking wavelets.  
This latest version of Sea-hide is comfortable even in 28 degrees. The previous hide had to go, we all agree.  The design was poor. With no opening windows it was stifling. ' No seats, nowhere to put your coffee cup.' Birders settle into sea-watch, like these two men who have come directly from Coastguard Cottages to Sea-hide,  their destination  right here in this hide, for the day. They're  genial and helpful and, without telescopes, we could not identify those shoreline waders; turnstone, dunlin and sanderling.
My friend discovers what happened to Groyne Hide back at the information centre.  Coming to the end of its life it needed  to be replaced, she was told. We hope the new design will meet the needs of birders and those on seal-watch.
That evening Prime MInister Andy Burnham has summoned a meeting of COBRA to discuss the crisis of heat-waves, drought and wildfires.  He requests supermarkets not to sell disposable barbecues which are known to have caused numbers of wildfires.(camp fires, cigarettes and fireworks also the cause). The destruction of wildlife and their habitat and long-term damage to the environment is immeasurable. So is the impact on farmers, their livestock and their crops. The hazard to stressed and exhausted firefighters is unimaginable. 
On the morning of 15th the first thing we see on our phones is a government alert about the extreme risk of wildfires.  Do not light ANY fires, the Prime MInister exhorts the public.
Booths supermarket, Kendal,  has news-stands with headlines
Europe ablaze: The Guardian. Ban the barbies.  Prime Minister says don't light ANY fires: The Sun.
But the entrance to Booths is all about CHARCOAL, fuel for fires. Another display in the store. 
Sunday 16
Radio 4  Farming Today, Tinderbox Harvest
World this Weekend    focuses on the urgency of action, including the building of on-farm reservoirs. According to a Moray Poll 3/4 of the population want to see immediate action to address wildfires/ drought.  Booths need to wake up. 
Monday 17 PM Andy Burnham prioritizes the building of on-farm reservoirs.  And the removal of restrictive planning controls which prevent its happening. 

Clouded Yellow amongst knapweed at Arnside Knott

After a Butterfly Conservation marathon I reflect on all that has been discovered, and achieved. On Members Day we filled a lecture room at Leighton Moss for a morning of presentations, followed by an afternoon field-trip on Arnside Knott.
Moth-traps were opened and amongst those exquisite and tiny was a large Poplar Hawk Moth, a resident nocturnal moth that, once released, spent the morning roosting on a shady buddleia leaf.  A tiny Humming Bird Hawk Moth nectared on the shrub's  flowers, never still, and with rapid wing beats a video works best.  All true butterflies feed but the Poplar Hawk Moth  does not.  Like several species of moth it cannot feed but lives off reserves of fat. 

At Arnside Knott a female Silver Washed Fritillary swooped about fallen tree-trunks encrusted with peeling bark, laying  eggs in crevices.   'She almost landed on your camera,' our leader Chris told me. The butterfly alighted  below the log we leaned upon so we peered over it into shadows. So close, and so elusive.  She must have been aware of our presence but did not perceive us as a threat. Chris pointed out that there were plenty of violets, the food plant of her caterpillars. Interpreting  behaviour as we witness it makes a scene memorable.
A Purple Hairstreak is a life tick, for me. This arboreal butterfly flitted about oak and alighted on hazel.
 I've often seen Northern Brown Argus, Scotch Argus and Grayling. But when Dr Jules SImons mentioned that she'd seen Clouded Yellow here yesterday I fervently hoped she could conjure them into being. Clouded Yellow is a 'true migratory butterfly' which we saw throughout Easter 2024 in Tuscany.  On one long, leisurely interlude we sat amongst periwinkle flowers,  seeing a play of sunlight and shadow create  translucence and shades of colour through Clouded Yellow wings.  One butterfly hangs from a blue periwinkle flower,  green as the surrounding leaves. 

With a spirit of co-operation and sharing in a large group of keen-eyed experts we see so much more. But to take photographs I like the freedom of being alone.  Strong sunlight blazed colour from those first Clouded Yellow  down in the herb layer where splashes of yellow could be  flowers or fading vegetation. Like someone who completes a marathon, I'm delighted but could  do better. In my mind's-eye I can still see sharp images, with rich colour through translucent wings- like the sudden illumination of stained-glass windows. Colour alters significantly, depending on the incidence of sunlight.  And here are my first British Clouded Yellows. 
​There's intense focus from our experts when they came upon a morph of Clouded Yellow, Helice variant which is rather paler.  There's infinite variety in colour so I pass on that one. Released, it settled on a lady's T shirt. 

It was almost 5.00pm, the hottest time of the day and an uphill slog but we were approaching the stand of hemp agrimony where we'd often found Brown Hairstreak, a striking arboreal butterfly.   Our subject was settled on a flower so this was a more leisurely photo-shoot.

Painted Ladies are doing well in this hot, hot summer. Chris pointed out that some are rather smaller.  When a butterfly emerges from a chrysalis  that's its adult size, it does not grow further.  When caterpillar or chrysalis has been under stress, through heat or drought, the emerging butterfly can be smaller, or damaged. 
Thanks to Chris Winnick and to all at Butterfly Conservation's Members Day for a tour de force, a memorable day when the weather was perfect and Arnside Knott did us proud.  
A day like yesterday whets the appetite for more, brings more questions. The Clouded Yellow is a migratory butterfly and cannot overwinter in the UK as it's too cold. But on 12 August the fifth heat-wave of the year will be upon us. 28 degrees forecast.  So how is the species adapting with climate change? There are already records of a few overwintering in favoured spots on the Dorset cliffs. In the meantime, where is its reproductive base, the location where the species breeds in numbers and overwinters. Clouded Yellow comes from North Africa and southern Europe.  We saw numbers in Tuscany in 2024. Does it overwinter there? Below, a sequence of Clouded Yellow feeding on periwinkle and rosemary on 3 April 2024. 

Painted lady with coiled proboscis about to nectar on verbena bonariensis

The moment the sun breaks free of cloud painted ladies come to nectar  on verbena flowers in the herbaceous border. In close encounters I'm intent on photography.  Two young women walk along the terrace toward the castle tower and I overhear their fantasy.
'My castle would be in Scotland,' she tells her friend. 
A lad I knew from infant school bought a ruined castle in Ireland.  He grew to look the part, a Celtic clan chief with a long ragged beard and enveloping  hair.  The cult of medieval Irish.  
The actor Jeremy Irons owns Kilcoe Castle, a 15th century tower house in West Cork.  In Shakespeare's history play he was Henry IV, with Tom Hiddleston as his son Prince Hal.
Strolling kitchen gardens and orchards at Sizergh there's always the backdrop of the castle to conjure the romance of medieval England.  Life in a medieval castle must have been remote from the scene today with families and young children at leisure in a fun  escape from reality.

The kitchen garden is a  marvel of design and a riot of colour, with a striking range of fruit, flowers and vegetables. Tall fennel mingles with verbena bonariensis favoured of butterflies.  To hope to recreate all this at home may be a fantasy too far. Sizergh does it best.
Up on the terrace, dahlias recurve their petals to present anthers laden with pollen. Bees are the most efficient pollinators, their hairy legs in deep.  Painted ladies cling to petals with tarsal claws at the tip of slender legs as they  sip nectar from tube-like flowers with their long proboscis. 

The castle is always a presence wherever we may wander about Sizergh gardens.  Wildlife highlights are set against the back-drop of the castle. Frogs mating in the lake, house martins and swallows nesting about the tower, mustering in early autumn, butterflies nectaring on flowers in the herbaceous border then feeding on fermenting fruit in the orchard -  always against this magical stage set. 
On the lawn below the terrace an information board tells of games the family played here in Victorian times, and invites visitors to play. Small helmeted children ride small bikes and micro-cars.
An Englishman's home is his castle- it's worth reflecting on what this metaphor might mean in 2026.  What if a castle were our home? The National Trust realises we may succumb to the fantasy of living in a castle for a brief interlude.  Dr Helen Castor claims that Shakespeare's plays power our vision of medieval England and there's none better than 'Henry V' to summon patriotism.  By Victorian times castles had long since lost their original purpose as  stronghold and  fortification.
After long months of summer drought, 4th August brings the first audible rain to Cumbria. True rain gurgling in pipes about the house, filling water butts, running in gutters, revitalising refreshing rain.  

A Small Copper nectars on Verbena flowers

'Some twenty painted ladies flew off the sea at Arnside,'  he lingers a moment to admire those nectaring on verbena flowers along the terrace at Sizergh Castle.
'I don't come here for the castle, I come for nature and the gardens,' he adds.
I heard once that Sir Thomas Strickland took 25 men to Agincourt, and brought them all safely home. Given marches through France, siege warfare, and outbreaks of dysentery that was quite an achievement.  How did he do it,
and why does the battle of Agincourt feature so prominently in English history? Medieval historian Dr Helen Castor sheds light on the subject.
My day is with the butterflies, in the evening I listen to her lecture. The archers probably determined the win for Henry V and England. English and Welsh longbowmen were the best in the world and Sir Thomas Strickland's longbowmen would have bows made from ancient yew growing about Sizergh. 

Sunny intervals and a moderate breeze, says the forecast.  There's bright cumulous and a lovely cloudscape up on Scout Scar and with a refreshing breeze the walk to Sizergh is delightful.  The castle terrace is a butterfly hotspot with  verbena flowers which attract  painted ladies. The terrace is south-facing and in full sun, no breeze here so it's hot, hot, hot. But I linger for the wealth of bees and butterflies.  
Whites are most abundant, with a number of painted ladies, the  occasional red admiral, peacock, small tortoiseshell and meadow brown. A burst of sunlight brings an immediate flurry of wings amongst bright dahlias and verbena flowers.  Images focus on a chosen subject and still the action. The  immediate experience is different. I'm alert to the least movement, the pulse of life  and intermingling of bees and butterflies.   In the poise and balance of nectaring sunlight and shadow confer colour and withdraw it from butterflies. Wings closed, a butterfly can present  a fine line, a knife edge. 

Hoping to photograph several painted ladies in a single image, I see that one butterfly  is smaller and different. Small copper sets my heart racing and I'm delighted to find it here.  The herbaceous border along the castle terrace attracts so many pollinators I know there will be something I've missed.

In Shakespeare's English history plays it is Henry V who represents all that a king should be. Agincourt, October 1415, St Crispin's Day. To a rousing Te Deum Kenneth Branagh's King Henry carries a fallen youth from the field of battle.  God gave us this victory, Henry believes. Helen Castor endorses Shakespeare's portrait of Henry V as England's greatest king. HIs preparations for campaigns in France were meticulous. He was the consummate strategist. A leader of conviction who could inspire his men. Insuperable hostility between Armagnac and Burgundy left the French with a confused chain of command and little in the way of a plan.  
So, history and natural history.  I've come seeking butterflies but as I wander  up and down the terrace the castle tower is always in view and I reflect upon SIr Thomas Stickland, charged to provide men for King Henry's campaign in France,  ensuring his longbowmen are well prepared, well provisioned.  Destination France.  For them, Azincourt/ Agincourt is a destination  yet unknown.

Scotch Argus

Low cloud hugged the fells on a humid and warm morning.  We approached Smardale Gill Viaduct from the west and I knew just where I'd expect to find Scotch Argus. But wondered how successive heat-waves had affected butterflies and their nectar sources. Where bloody cranesbill are found beyond the twin lime-kilns there flowers were gone to seed.  Yellow rattle had set-seed too.  There was some marjoram but it was almost lost in rank vegetation which often looked sun-stressed. 

Today, there were men from Cornwall and from Yorkshire amongst those searching the grass in the Scotch Argus micro-habitat.  And they counted some dozen.  Later in the afternoon the sun appeared so perhaps the tally rose.

For some of my previous  encounters with Scotch Argus see  blog archive.
25.8.  2015
16.8.2018  with Butterfly Conservation
 3& 4 . 8 2021   one with Butterfly Conservation
30.7. 2025
   Waitby Greenriggs and Smardale with Northern Brown Argus

Smardale: reading a landscape
     Perspectives on Smardale 

Bright cumulous cloud over Scout Scar, 19th July

The child  is the youngest person on Scout Scar today. 'Two weeks and a bit ', his father tells me. 'I wonder how many times he'll come here.'
I have lost count of the times I've walked here this millennium. 
​To avoid the 23 degrees forecast for mid-afternoon I set out at 7.00am. 'Sunny with light winds'. A blue sky patterned with cumulous cloud is refreshing after days of heat-wave haze.
The herbaceous border is bright with summer flowers and I have the castle terrace to myself, me and the bees and butterflies. Imagine living  here and being out in the gardens in the solitude of early morning.  Green vine-leaves festoon the south-facing brick wall and pears on cordons are ripening.  Pollinators  seek nectar amongst flowers and I spy the whirring flight of a Humming-bird-hawk-moth hovering by verbena flowers to sip nectar with its long proboscis, never settling.  One , maybe more.
I shall return next day, to seek this enchanting moth.  And to breakfast on summer berry flapjack at the Sizergh cafe.

Next day's forecast is 24 degrees, sunny with light winds.  But at 7.00am it's already hot without a breath of air.  Scout Scar escarpment  catches any breeze, but there's none.  I walk briskly, an interlude in the castle garden then home before the mid-afternoon heat. 
Wings and shadow wings flicker across the terrace wall and through the flowers.  Tall verbena flowers with a backdrop of vines with long green tendrils. A blue damsel on a vine leaf,  a small skipper on verbena.  Meandering  to and fro along the terrace perhaps I glimpse Humming bird hawk moth.  Moments of seeming stillness amongst  bright nasturtiums and dahlias, then a wild dance of winged creatures and a vanishing maybe moth.    Painted ladies linger,  translucent with bright upper-wings and beautiful eye-spots on the underwings. The hot sun is on my back but I stay with the butterflies a long while, knowing there's welcome shade in the terrace gazebo. 
House martins are calling and flying  into their nests in window niches in the castle tower.  In a reprise of last summer I delight in the wildlife here-  a natural history.  And like the history of the castle there is much that is elusive. 

I walk through rank vegetation beside the lake en route for Holeslack, hoping for a reprise of the Humming bird hawk moths I'd found there yesterday.   The fringe of woodland gives a moment of respite, a welcome shade.  Up on Scout Scar at noon it's exposed, in searing sun.  Where are the light winds the forecast promised? There's no-one else walking along the escarpment and in this heat it feels reckless.  I've water to drink but the heat is enervating. A few moments of cloud cover and a faint breath of air is restorative, but with the next blast of heat comes  a sense of being overwhelmed.
Two days with a similar weather forecast, but the experience was so different.  It's an equivocal summer,  something lovely, something unbearable.  
My painted ladies look cool, look hot.  In sunlight and shadows there are mysteries hidden in foliage and in the terrace wall. Both lakes are green with a thick covering of aquatic vegetation and I wonder how their wildlife fares.
 July 2026   in context
 26 July. Wildfires in France and Spain dominate the news. In 'The Battle of Bordeaux'  firemen seek to protect the city. Spain has declared a national emergency. Winter rains encouraged the growth of vegetation, followed by dry weather which creates  fuel for wildfires. June 2026 is the second hottest recorded in France, the hottest in Spain. With temperatures set to rise to 40 degrees in the latest heat-wave.
Fire clouds, pyrocumulonimbus,  are a phenomenon created when severe wildfires generate their own weather systems,  including fire-generated thunder storms.
There are wildfires in the Cairngorms, in the moors of Greater Manchester, and in Wales.

From Scout Scar escarpment looking down to the Lyth Valley and out to Morecambe Bay

Coming down off Scout Scar, there are several butterfly hotspots and I linger over scabious and hawkweed where common blue butterflies flit over drifts of flowers. A dark green fritillary is so sun-bleached it's lost its rich orange colours.   A small skipper and a meadow brown show close in the scabious favoured of pollinators. Bramble flowers are fading fast- in this prolonged heat-wave flowers bloom and set seed rapidly. Long grass stems woven together with strong silk tell that spiders have been busy.  
There used to be swallows at Bradleyfield Farm and they're much missed.   When insects are flying low the swifts are scooping them up.   Soon they'll be gone.  
How would you describe an English summer? With sunshine and refreshing rain, green fields. England is blessed, was blessed, with an equable  climate- no extremes.  In the hot summer of 1976 I must have been abroad and flown home over drought-parched brown fields.  That summer stands out as an exception. We are neither prepared nor adapted for the change that is upon us, neither us, nor our homes, nor our infrastructure.  Nor is our flora and fauna, our wildlife and our farms.

Looking south west toward Whitbarrow and Morecambe Bay from Scout Scar escarpment

Low cloud and mist flowed off the Irish Sea into the Lyth Valley, once an inlet of the sea. The heights of Whitbarrow peeped above defined cloud.  The faintest hint of a breeze was refreshing.  I had set out at 7.00am, to escape the high temperatures of the afternoon.  Gradually, one or two runners appeared and there was a sense of camaraderie, we had come upon something wonderful.

Yesterday and today indicated temperatures would reach 25 centigrade but they were very different days.  Yesterday the flora of the limestone grassland looked glorious and a gentle breeze made the morning pleasant.
This morning, overnight dew lingered.  Micro-moths were on the wing and meadow brown and ringlet flying low through seeding grasses and flowers.  Crossing Kendal Race Course and heading toward Scout Scar was a trial.  Swifts flew low and I hoped they'd seize the biting horse-flies.  It was not yet 8.00am and the air was hot and humid.
From Scout Scar escarpment, the wonderful vista of summer clouds off the Irish Sea
I saw Common blue butterflies and glimpsed Dark Green Fritillaries but the surprising quality of the day was created by morning dew and mist from the sea. By drifts of deep purple betony, yellow ladies bedstraw and blue scabious. And by seas of seeding grasses woven by arachnids into structures that I puzzled to see how they'd been constructed.
Spiders can somehow draw long grass stems together and bind them.  And there were spiders' nests in the grass, made visible by an atmosphere laden with moisture. 

This summer I've been on Butterfly Conservation field-trips to venues around Morecambe Bay including Latterbarrow, Witherslack, White Scar, and Whitbarrow.  With the Lyth Valley drenched in low cloud I pondered upon the Fritillaries that are a highlight of these locations.

High summer with Common Blue on seeding grasses

Witherslack Estate came into the possession of the Stanley family circa 1485, soon after the battle of Bosworth. Possibly Thomas Stanley swayed the outcome of the battle with a switch of allegiance to his stepson Henry Tudor.  Stanley was created Earl of Derby and rewarded with Witherslack.  His wife, Margaret Beaufort, was the mother of the new king Henry VII, having negotiated his marriage to Elizabeth of York to unite the houses of York and Lancaster.  The focus is power and dynasty- not sure that Margaret Beaufort and Thomas Stanley revelled in Fritillaries in their newly acquired wooded estates. But imagine the biodiversity, and abundance in the late 15th century.  Summer is not what it was, not as I remember childhood summers, not in welcome ways. The heat-wave summer of 1976 is memorable for being an aberration, a one-off. July 2026 sees the third heat-wave of the year, triggering a wave of wild-fires, of unprecedented global range. 98% caused by mankind, either accidentally or deliberately, with devastating destruction to wildlife and the environment.  Kids with fireworks causing serious moorland fires!!! Portable barbecues red hot and abandoned. 
On 7th July 2026 I'm here on a Butterfly Conservation field-trip. We see several Silver Washed Fritillary. We saw High Brown Fritillary  here two years ago, but our experts  do not find them this time. Although the search is on across favoured sites. Howe Ridding Wood and the nearby Latterbarrow are important  for flora and butterflies and we learn of Natural England's work in Howe Ridding Wood to create appropriate habitat. 

12th July Brigsteer Wood 
The wood is sensuous and dream-like, with an aura of mid-summer magic.  Silver Washed Fritillary fly through deep shadows of the woodland-fringe, and out into strong sunlight over banks of bracken with hemp agrimony coming into flower.   A trio of dancing butterflies lives on in my mind's-eye, when photographs fail. They're too distant, too close, too swift in flight.  Circling close about me, tantalising large butterflies with pointed wings in a flash of deep orange. The secret lives of butterflies,  in their domain, in shadow and in bright sunlight, a glimpse of a butterfly alighting on a hazel leaf- gone in a second. They seem to sense my presence, almost brushing against me, never settling.  Wondrous and welcome, unlike the stinging horseflies. 
Each flash of deep orange is a thrill, a possible Silver Washed Fritillary.  Two morph into comma which settle deep in brambles to show their dark  underwing with jagged edge and menacing eye.  But the flight of large Silver Washed Fritillary is distinctive and if sometimes a glance is inconclusive, who cares.  The magic of the wood is everything; the fragrance of water-mint and flora of the herb-layer,  purple loosestrife and yellow-loosestrife,  meadow sweet and greater willow herb.  Resin trickling down tree-bark.  Red admiral alight on the track, meadow brown, ringlet and whites are everywhere. Not only today but now and then,  with memories of summer days here in this wood. 
I’m chased by a black and yellow chaser that circles and circles me.   Look and shoot, that’s all it takes.  But too much technology kills the magic. A ringing phone is intrusive. The latest craze is Meta-glasses but the idea of being photographed unawares and deep-faked is disturbing.
The essence of a mid-summer woodland is not about photographs.  An English woodland, now and then, then and now.  The weather is changing in new and unpredictable ways for which we are unprepared.  If we are heat-stressed, so are butterflies and flowers. So are cattle down in the Lyth Valley. 

High Brown Fritillary

To see a High Brown Fritillary is a rare privilege. To see two, a female followed by a male, is remarkable. The High Brown Fritillary is the UKs most endangered butterfly. It's auto-ecology, its habitat, is precise. The female seeks bracken litter upon which to lay her eggs which will hibernate in the micro-climate it provides. Common dog-violet or hairy violet are the food plants for her caterpillars and must be close by.  Lose the violets, we lose the butterfly so Butterfly Conservation monitors butterflies and ensures violets are present.  
In the last 70 years there's been a dramatic decline in High Brown Fritillary numbers. In flight, it's hard to distinguish Dark Green and High Brown Fritillary. Patterns are intricate. I love the deep rich orange of the upper-wings and the head of the butterfly. Under-wings are paler and more delicate in pattern. 

The first fresh Silver Washed Fritillary are on the wing.  Another stunning Fritillary.  Females lay their eggs under the bark of oak or deciduous trees with common dog violet, the food plant of their caterpillars, close to the base of the trunk.   Butterflies emerge from the shadowy woodland fringe and often the first glimpse is amongst bracken fronds.  A large butterfly with pointed wings. 
Today's Fritillaries are fresh, bright and exquisite. 

Northern Brown Argus can be confused with the Common Blue, Polyommatus Icarus. We saw both today and images of their underwings show the similarity.

Several Tiger moths were on the wing over bracken.  I glimpsed the scarlet under-wing and have a rather blurred image.  The moth settled, wings closed, to show a black and white patterning.
​A Dingy Skipper showed well on self-heal. 
Butterfly Conservation is about creating the precise habitat endangered species need to survive, to thrive.  So ensuring caterpillar food plants, like common dog violet, are present is an important task. And working with farmers to ensure an appropriate cattle-grazing regime. 

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Six-spot burnet moth, Zygena filipendulae, on scabious

Red and black spells danger, the six-spot burnet moth is aposematic with colours to warn-off a predator. Beware toxins, from caterpillar to moth this species can produce hydrogen cyanide. 
In distinctive buzzing flight the day-flying six spot burnet moth gives glimpses of red and black.  Settled to nectar on scabious,  its fore-wings show  black with red spots.  I've seen moths mating,  together on scabious for well over an hour, so warning colours could help protect them when they're vulnerable to predation.
Wings closed as the moth nectars on a flower, that's the classic field-guide look. Wings open, the hind-wings are bright red with a dark margin.  It's a striking moth.
Six-spot burnet moth, Zygena filipendula. A blog of mid-summer's day 2018 (see link below) shows six-spot burnet, Zygena filipendula, on Dropwort, Filipendula vulgaris which is another flower favoured by the moth when it seeks nectar.  
             Six-spot Burnet Moth 

Out on the limestone grasslands of Scout Scar photographing six-spot burnet I watch a moth seeking nectar on yellow hawkweed, interacting with the flower, changing position.  I'm circling the flower,  watching how sunlight falls upon the moth in fresh angles of incidence, seeing its wings assume sheen and iridescence,  seeing colours modify each moment.  

 With wings closed the moth's black fore-wings may suddenly assume a soft, silvery sheen.  Its clubbed antennae may show blue, as on mid-summer's day 2018. The incidence of light is transient,  as the moth moves, as sunlight strikes it and structural iridescence comes into play, so  colours are constantly modified. Moths and butterflies can confuse predators in this way. On the yellow hawkweed, one red hind-wing appears momentarily orange,  the wing is translucent and yellow petals show through.   Sunlight and shadow also affect how we see moths and butterflies.  I find it fascinating, and beautiful to see the effects of structural iridescence.
For structural iridescence and  Britain's cyanide moths - see link to The Natural HIstory Museum

Toxic talents of Britain's cyanide moths
Natural History Museum
https://www.nhm.ac.uk › discover › toxic-talents-cya
Natual History Museum
Natural Hisory Museu

Raindrops on strands of spide silk over a flush

Yellow flowers of spearwort overhang water. Blades of grass stippled with raindrops reach out around water mint.  Raindrops highlight long silken strands that somehow the spider has cast over dark water.   The image catches the essence of a rainy day.
Vegetation is saturated and cuckoo spit is abundant.  Our feet raise moths like this silver-ground carpet and the micro-moth Aethes cnicana.   There are large, leafy plants of Devlil's-bit scabious and Chris tells us that Marsh Fritillary will be close to their larval foodplant, deep down through a cool and rainy morning.  If this weather lasts they'll be unable to feed so will grow weak. When they do fly their flight will be slower so they'll be vulnerable to predation.
To estimate  Marsh fritillary success we'd need to return in early August to count webs. Last year, there were some 70 webs each with up to 100 caterpillars.  Only 10% will reach adulthood.  Adults will now be close, right down in foliage and very hard to see. The egg stage is quite brief,  the caterpillar stage is long and goes right though winter.   Freshly hatched caterpillars feed and feed. By September they're a centimetre long .  With autumn weather all the caterpillars go right down to ground level and enter hibernation, staying together as a mass almost at the surface level  of the soil. Their communal webs shrink right down into a mass, a black ball. They live together at ground level, so low down that even the long tongues of grazing cattle will not rip up too many, most will survive. Cattle grazing (the right number) opens up vegetation and allows Devil's-bit scabious to thrive the following year.  On a warm and sunny day in January and February  caterpillars would rise above their silken thread and little black masses can be seen in mid-winter if it's warm and sunny.  If it grows cold they'll retreat down to soil level and will repeat this pattern depending on the weather until the end of March beginning of April when it's warm enough for them to come up and have a really good feed to complete instars.   If they get to the third instar they'll go right through 4,5, 6 then pupate mid to late April. Pupil and egg stage are quite short. The caterpillar stage is long and extends right through winter. 
I've seen the butterfly and hope to return in August to see webs and caterpillars.  I saw Marsh fritillary for the first time in late May last year and began to learn about their secret lives.  The butterfly has a single brood and this is peak-flight time.  The thistles they feed on are only just coming into flower, synchronicity is key.

Mining bee

Mining bees responded to bursts of sunlight on a day of louring cloud, flying over entrance holes the colony had burrowed in soft soil mid-track, quickly disappearing below ground.  On my second day of bee-watch I felt the rhythm of their behaviour and was poised to photograph the moment a bee approached its entrance. If I listened intently I could just catch the vocalisation of hovering bees.
Some years at this season, in warm dry weather,  neat holes appear at intervals on the track where there's a south-facing slope.  1st June saw rain much of the day, sometimes heavy showers, so what happens to the colony then? Holes appear, then they're gone. Soil all around their entrances has been finely worked, with little mounds made during excavation.  What we see and what we do not see. The bees are colonial, communicating with each other, somehow working together- so do those entrances link up and is there an underground chamber- what's the structure? And if they store pollen, have eggs and larvae, will other insects predate them-  one or two ants show in my images.

Every man and his dog who walked this way at the end of May must have walked through these colonies of mining bees. I wonder how many noticed them.  Often, walkers detoured to avoid us, mid-track and intent on studying bee behaviour.  Being mid-thoroughfare does not seem to trouble the bees and they went about their business seemingly undisturbed by our presence.  Tiny bees, hovering low over their holes,  the buzzing sound so faint you'd  only hear it if you stopped to study them.

The mining bees have black wings and antennae, a bright yellow abdomen and yellow legs.  Their bodies seem dusted with pollen. It's suggested they're hawthorn bees and the shrub is common beside the track, flowers now somewhat fading.  I have not seen them foraging and they're so tiny they'd be hard to spot. 
On Saturday I photographed tiny, slender bees, perhaps males.  Next day, Sunday, I think I have the females- larger and with a larger, yellow abdomen. 
Are they mining bees, or leaf-cutters?  ID is challenging.
I wonder if they attract predation. I notice a few ants close by.
​Up on Scout Scar escarpment the sky grew dark, with louring clouds.  Hoary rock rose is heliotropic, its flowers closing until the sun shines.  Common rock rose is at its most abundant and lavish, flowers fully open. So the two species are easy to distinguish on such a day.
Close by the track were about four fly orchid. And a few mountain everlasting fully open, some budding and to come.  

Painted lady on the way to Scout Scar

Go back a decade at this season and my archive shows a wealth of butterflies on Scout Scar, both greater abundance and diversity. Today is remarkable, but different.  Painted lady and small heath are the only species I'm certain of, probably dingy skipper. I saw some forty or more painted ladies during the hours I was on the Scar.
As soon as I was on the footpath crossing Kendal Race Course a painted lady fluttered about me and settled on dried mud on the track.  And I had a painted lady escort of fresh buttterflies all the way to the escarpment. Not fresh, different.  Last week's heat-wave, the hottest May on record, had taken its toll. Wings were faded, worn and ragged.  They were dispersed across Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows, most were single butterflies. I returned across the Race Course via the footpath to the milestone. The sheep disappeared before lambing time and there are drifts of butterflies and pignut.  Accompanied by painted ladies,  confidence in identifying them at a glance in flight grows quickly. I'd had hours of being surrounded, knew them to be often faded, under-wings pale.  
In a place one knows and loves there are seasonal rhythms, patterns one looks for.  When yellow hawkbit, hawkweed and hawksbeard come into flower I've often found glossy green beetles.  Last year, I searched and searched and could not find one. Today, I saw several. They're Cryptocephalus Hypochaeridis Last Sunday on Latterbarrow we were all seeking to understand why there were few butterflies. Today, I'm puzzling over what I'm finding. 

The flora of the escarpment edge is lavish.  Hoary rock rose is overtaken by common rock rose which is now profuse, and last longer.  Often, flowers on the rocky edge become sun-burnt and fade fast, like the rue-leaved saxifrage, now a hint of withered red below a mass of lovely common rock rose.  The first dropwort appear, always their loveliest when the plant has pink buds and fresh white flowers. 
The stony track is dry so solar-powered painted ladies take the sun on hot rock.  Where the track is uneven, a mix of small rocks and earth, there are clusters of neat holes made by mining bees.  I stop to watch tiny black and yellow bees hovering, then touching down and swiftly vanishing into a hole, a yellow bee-bum the last you see of them.  Looking closely, I see the soil all around their series of holes has been finely worked.  A  man with two dogs approaches and I tell him of the bees, to protect both. He hadn't noticed although he must have walked through earlier colonies.  
What we see and what we do not see.  I watch bees disappearing below ground but do not see them emerging. They're tiny, as my smudgy images suggest. I look them up but I'm still not sure which species they are.  Perhaps they're working the fine soil as I watch but they're so tiny I doubt I'd see that.   
All this, right before us.  There is so much to discover and to delight in.  After a May Bank Holiday with Radio 4 sharing a slew of tales of woe with airport delays with long queues for biometric data-gathering, diversions caused by passengers endangering flights,  well - Flying is a questionable good for us, and certainly does no good to the planet