Scout Scar with Painted Ladies and Mining Bees at your feet

Painted lady on the way to Scout Scar

Today is something special.  All the way to Scout Scar there are marvels at your feet, and close about you.   As I return someone is setting out across Kendal Race Course, along the track. 
 ' Look out for Painted ladies,' I suggest, 'they're flying low over buttercups and pignut  and settling on the track. '
'Butterflies,' he said. 'I didn't think there were any these days'
 'And there are tiny mining bees.'
'Didn't think there were bees left either.'
Well, they're here today and it's wonderful.

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