The Lyth Valley from Scout Scar escarpment Below Scout Scar escarpment, down in the Lyth Valley. the farmer is taking a crop of grass for haylage. Patterns appear as he works and, from the cliff-top, I look out across a patchwork of pastures in shades of summer. Rain is forecast for tonight so there's a sense of urgency.
The cliff-top is at its loveliest at this season, the first week in June. Hoary rock rose is its speciality, abundant on the rock-face, its lemon flowers only opening to bright sunlight. Common rock rose lasts longer and is scattered more widely over the escarpment.
The cliff-top is at its loveliest at this season, the first week in June. Hoary rock rose is its speciality, abundant on the rock-face, its lemon flowers only opening to bright sunlight. Common rock rose lasts longer and is scattered more widely over the escarpment.
This first week in June has been cool so hoary rock rose will last longer. Growing about the limestone on the cliff-face, it can burn in a heat-wave. There's yellow horseshoe vetch and bird's-foot trefoil with mouse-ear hawkweed with a host of hawkweeds, hawk's-beards and hawbits. Happy to admire them without feeling the need to venture right onto the cliff-edge to name each one. Luckily, there's a low limestone terrace, set back from the edge, where rock roses flower with delicate milkwort that is sometimes cobalt blue, or purple or shades between.
The floral splendour and freshness of Scout Scar escarpment is all too brief and. for heliotropic flowers like hoary rock rose, there needs strong sunlight if the flowers are to open fully. Today, I'm lucky to meet Irene and Richard who are generous in sharing the three fly orchids they've found. So I spend a long while lying in the grass taking photographs, hoping to show the intricacies of the flower and to catch the rich velvety brown and the pale silvery patch that the camera balks at ( its a speculum or mirror.) Over some years, I've found fly orchid in different locations on Scout Scar. Three or four plants is the most I've found together and even when you know where to look and what to look for they're hard to see, being small, dark and at a glance rather like sedges. To me, the fly orchid resembles a parachutist suspended beneath a parachute of green sepals and the silver-white patch at the waist is a buckle of the harness. So I photograph it against the sky, in flight.
In the place you know best you might think you can predict what you'll find at a certain season. The mix of probabilities and the elusive makes a pattern over the years but there are always variations and surprises. I've heard the cuckoo but have not yet seen it here. One of my scouts called to tell me he'd heard it this morning, so intermittently its around. My redstart has been reliable through the season. Last year, he took up residence in this precise territory using the same display perches. This spring, he returned and began to sing in late April. He's still singing but the blue moor grass which at Easter flowers close to the ground has grown tall and its seed-heads rise above the flora of the cliff-top and show as motes of light in my images. I've spent many hours watching him and listening to his song. Facing toward me, his colouring is bold. When he turns his back his mantle blends with tree-bark. Only his beautiful orange-red tail shows warm colour.
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