Foulshaw Moss and Meathop Moss with green hairstreak, bog myrtle and osprey

Green hairstreak, Scout Scar 21st April 2020

 Days of cold east wind and strong sunlight bring a rapid advance in spring flora. Not a cloud in the sky and the day quickly grows warm. It’s peak-flight time and perfect weather for green hairstreak, and I know where to look.
At Foulshaw  Moss the early sun illuminates fresh leaves of birch, bringing translucence.   A striking contrast of bright birch and burnt umber  bog myrtle.  ‘The burning bush’, we call it.  A sturdy new boardwalk replaces a wibbly wobbly bridge leading to the viewing platform.  Water boatmen scintillate in sunlight, skimming the surface of the pool.  Aloft, we look out across the moss with contrasting colours  of bog myrtle, fresh green birch,  and ericas still in winter hue.  A grasshopper warbler sings in the reed beds 

​Osprey are returned, hoping to breed, and a telescope is erected and fixed on the tree where they should nest. Someone is looking for adder and finds green hairstreak, both on my wish-list. Heather and bog myrtle fringe the boardwalk, then bright green sphagnum moss threaded through with trailing stems  of  red and green cranberry leaves and pink flower buds.  A green hairstreak flits to and fro and settles somewhere amongst a rippling weave of ericas and sphagnum moss.  It alights,  somewhere in the intricate tapestry of the moss.  Back home, I search images for that elusive butterfly deep in the tangled weave of moss flora.  There’s bog rosemary with pale pink flowers and deeper pink flower buds of cranberry.  There are dark glossy cranberries, last summers’ fruit.  In flight, green hairstreak looks brown settles to show leaf-shaped underwings of a pale shade of jade green with a hint of cream.   In my mind's-eye I still see that tiny jade jewel in sunlit sphagnum.
Today, green hairstreak are  present  at Foulshaw Moss and at Meathop Moss. 

​I love the catkin season, tree flowers against a blue sky.  Goat willow has robust spiky catkins and there are willows with catkins of different forms.  Birch have pendent green catkins and crinkly fresh leaves.   Bog myrtle shrubs have deep red stems and deep gold catkins, their leaf-buds showing on separate stems.
The sun pours down on  hummocks of grass and sedge where adder will be basking, but we cannot find them.  Birdsong is luxuriant and at Meathop Moss there are willow warbler, chiff-chaff and wren.  We hear sedge warbler and blackcap, garden warbler , redpoll and Cetti’s warbler.
 The  sudden clarion call of a cuckoo is a joy and the bird  settles briefly in a dead tree out on the moss.  If the jewel-like jade of green hairstreak  can be caught on camera we have not caught it this time.  They’re ethereal beauty is elusive.  In my mind’s-eye they flit about us,  a flicker of brown wings but the green hairstreak settles and closes its wings  to become a jewel of jade.  Picture the pale pink flower of bog rosemary and wings of jade against the bright green of spaghnum moss.  Searching images for the tiny butterfly I discover the pink buds of cranberry flowers and rich colours in the moss.