all the blues (butterflies, not mood)
There is more than a fair chance that, if I'm mainly going to write about things which made me feel good, a large proportion of posts will be things in the natural world that I've noticed while out walking my dog.
In fairness, just going out and walking the dog is a good thing in itself most days. Not so much the wet and windy stormy days, nor the bone-chilling, frozen around your wotsits winter days, but most days.
Today's good thing was butterflies. Butterflies are always good.
On the site of an old WW2 airfield, now mostly a forestry plantation, the spaces between the now potholed remains of the concrete runways and access roads have mostly been left to look after themselves. The soil is shallow and poor, which makes it a good scrubby grassland habitat now, with a wide mix of natural wildflowers that have arrived by their various wind-blown or bird poo methods, set up home, and thrived.
In the middle of the summer, although not the sunniest day we've had this year so far, there was a lot of butterfly activity, and today seemed to be one particularly busy with the blue varieties.
At one point, I stepped off the road into the middle of the grasses to look around in wonder at a concentration of common blues, pitched on the flowers of trefoil and clover around me. There must have been over twenty within the immediate three or four square metres.
I apologise for the picture quality. Phone camera, zoomed in a lot, rather than the fancy-assed 42mp DSLR with £1000 Macro lens. Too lazy/weak to carry it most of the time. This is a common blue.
The walk was a butterflytastic one, but it was particularly tastic on the blue types.
Possibly, I'd interrupted some sort of blues social occasion. Or an orgy. Although there didn't seem to be a lot of actual blue-on-blue action taking place. They were mainly staking out their own stalks. It may have been an egg-laying party.
This one was hard to identify though. I looked through all the blues on the Butterfly Conservation Society's website, and couldn't see anything like it, so I was a little stumped—I'm normally pretty good on ID for butterflies.
In the end, I happened on a picture where, although the wings are more brown than they looked in my photograph, it's markings are very much like this one.
A Brown Argus. That's why I didn't find it when I was looking for butterflies that were 'blue'. I guess maybe I caught it at an angle where it was reflecting more blue light than brown. (If anyone knows different, I'd be glad to hear it.)
Anyway, along with the Holly Blue, plus all the numerous 'normal' Orange Tip, Comma, Red Admiral, Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell types, plus Skippers, Small Coppers and Burnett moths, it was a particularly fluttery walk today, so easily earns its ThisWasGood tag.
PS: I am aware that only three types of blue butterfly are not 'all the blues' that the UK has, so please don't write in to tell me that my title is 'wrong'.
PPS: If you do fancy getting involved in monitoring how well or not the UK's butterflies are doing this year, the Big Butterfly Count is on from July 18th - August 10th, details at the Butterfly Conservation Society's website
Written by a real person who completely ignores red wavy underlining and uses perfectly legitimate brand new words that just haven't made it to a dictionary yet.
Post Link: https://skryblans.com/all-the-blues-butterflies-not-mood
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