Scout Scar in gold ochre

Scout Scar escarpment 14 July

 Summer's heat-weave has burnished Scout Scar escarpment.  Hot limestone has  cooked the grasses.  The season powers through fast. 
Ten days ago, there were drifts of yellow hawkbit and dark green fritillaries fed on their nectar. Now the flowers are gone, leaving   parachute seed-heads  ready to catch the breeze.  Scabious are everywhere, with knapweed and carline thistle attracting bumble bees. There are days when butterflies luxuriate, sipping nectar in a leisurely way.

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Heat and still days have brought forth butterflies and over June and July  it's been an opportunity to study them. A  good butterfly summer is a chance to reinforce everything learnt over the years.   I spied a small butterfly nectaring on scabious, a common blue.  It was nudged off the flower by a new arrival, flying swift in an orange blur.  Then quickly onto red clover, and it was gone.  Jizz came to my aid. I knew it was none of the butterflies I'd been watching through the last two months.  There was only a moment  but  a couple of images  confirm it's a small skipper, the first I've found here.  The butterfly perches with forewings half-closed, difficult to show in these rapid images. 
Butterflies are fragile creatures and the wings of this meadow brown are weathered, torn and translucent.  Colours on the common blue look faded.  I saw a ringlet but it was gone in a moment.

I don't think I've ever seen flowers bloom and fade so fast up on Scout Scar.  Never have I seen its grassland burnished gold like this.   Last week there was splendid alto cumulus cloud with sunlight that silvered the swifts. And a day of steady rain.  But the heat-wave is prolonged and relentless so those deep cracks in the earth are still there.