Hare's-tail cotton grass, eriophorum vaginatum A quest is immersive, in deep. It's about discovery although you'll never find entirely what you seek, and always there's something elusive , something more.
Seeing an adder on a rock is unexpected since there is, at first, a chill breeze. Skylark and meadow pipit sing, with the constant refrain of a cuckoo, distant and unseen.
Gills flow down from Shap Fell, intersecting the track south of Wetsleddale Reservoir. The silken plumes of cotton grass seed-heads are abundant. Tufted and tussocky sedges, they favour wet, acid bogs.
I'm in quest of butterflies; marsh fritillary, small pearl bordered fritillary and small heath.
A flowering rowan overhangs a waterfall where a footbridge crossing a beck. A drift of white pignut flowers then water-tracks with spearwort, butterwort, sundew, marsh lousewort and marsh forget-me-not. The flora of marsh and mire, of bog. By a gill, beneath a tree, butterflies are dancing, golden in sunlight. Small heath alight amongst sedges and vanish.
If I've seen marsh fritillary before the memory eludes me, lost in the mists of time. This feels like a life-tick, life-enhancing, a thrill to discover something beautiful and rare.
Fritillaries alight on damp mud, on rock, down amongst blades of grass or sedge. The upper-wings show asymmetric shapes in rich colours, like medieval stained-glass windows, imprecise and blurred. Pattern is wavering, colour seeps through integument. I creep close and circle a butterfly, to photograph it from different perspectives, showing a dark, furry body within bright upper-wings, and black and white striped antennae tipped with deep gold. The quest goes on- I hope next time to see the butterfly nectaring on a flower, showing the underwings. If we return later in the summer we may see the distinctive webs woven about their caterpillars.
I know the target species for Wetsleddale but I do not know the butterfly 'hotspots.' I hope to return on a butterfly conservation field-trip shortly and that's a question that interests me. How to read a micro-habitat and how will the weather ( no rainfall from April through to later in May) affect flora and butterflies. And how to read the changing weather of the day.
Fritillaries alight on damp mud, on rock, down amongst blades of grass or sedge. The upper-wings show asymmetric shapes in rich colours, like medieval stained-glass windows, imprecise and blurred. Pattern is wavering, colour seeps through integument. I creep close and circle a butterfly, to photograph it from different perspectives, showing a dark, furry body within bright upper-wings, and black and white striped antennae tipped with deep gold. The quest goes on- I hope next time to see the butterfly nectaring on a flower, showing the underwings. If we return later in the summer we may see the distinctive webs woven about their caterpillars.
I know the target species for Wetsleddale but I do not know the butterfly 'hotspots.' I hope to return on a butterfly conservation field-trip shortly and that's a question that interests me. How to read a micro-habitat and how will the weather ( no rainfall from April through to later in May) affect flora and butterflies. And how to read the changing weather of the day.
A flock of grey lag geese calls loudly. Cattle are outlined against the horizon. There might be a time to ponder this place, the history of farming and the tumbling stone walls about the reservoir whose water-levels are low, in drought announced officially for the North West next day.
But as for me, I'm on a butterfly quest and today is all about splendour in the grass.
BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
Thanks to my good friend who followed-up our morning at Wetsleddale and alerted me to this BBC article.
But as for me, I'm on a butterfly quest and today is all about splendour in the grass.
BBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk › news › articles
Thanks to my good friend who followed-up our morning at Wetsleddale and alerted me to this BBC article.
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