Latterbarrow with Adder's tongue, Small copper and Small pearl-bordered fritillary

Drifts of aquilegia and pignut

With drifts of sunlit flowers Latterbarrow is delightful.  And on a Butterfly Conservation field-trip there are hidden gems to discover, and to share.   With cold weather the previous week there are fewer butterflies on the wing, but with experts on the qui vive  the day is rewarding. 
A Small copper shows translucent in sunlight,  shadowed by green foliage.  Colour is conferred by the light, seen in the stronger colouring of a Small copper on North Walney in late August 2018.

A couple of Small pearl-bordered fritillary are on the wing and our experts net both.  Or is it a sole butterfly, 'stressed to buggery' as our leader remarks, being netted twice!!    It's a beautiful butterfly, particularly the softer colours and patterns of the underwing.  A Common blue settles in the grass.

Adder's tongue is a small, scarce fern of old grassland: Richard Mabey, Flora Britannica.   ' Mysterious plants to discover.'  We would never have found it without Louise who volunteers with Cumbria Wildlife Trust on Latterbarrow, and had found it a few days previously. It's a distinctive fern,  a green spike protruding from an oval leaf-like structure, but these plants are down in a weave of grasses.  
Back in June 2014 I found Adder's tongue on Warton Crag,  green ferns showing against a foil of dead bracken and much more visible. So it's 12 years since I last found Adder's tongue fern.  

This is what climate change feels like, says a meteorologist.  Climate whiplash,  extremes of weather with rapid change from cold weather to the highest May temperatures on record.