MORNING WALK IN BENTLEY WOODS, WILTSHIRE
WEATHER: very warm with long sunny spells, a little breezy. Temp 22C
Dawn and I drove to our friends house near Salisbury, this was our first visit to frineds since the lockdown on March 23rd!! We only stayed in the garden and later we had a lovely BBQ.
I left Dawn with her friend Debbie whilst I went to Bentley Woods with Nick. My main target was the PURPLE EMPEROR butterfly and Bentley Woods is one of the best places to find them. Unfortunately for me, this season has been quite bad for the Emperor, especislly the strong winds during the early part of June. As a consequence there are not many of them flying around, needless to say is that I never saw one.
But some of the managed 'rides' were full of other species, dense clumps of brambled sat beneath the oaks trees and the wide grass verges on the main tracks had plenty of sunshine. I saw 12 species of butterfly and photographed a few of them.
Speckled Wood
Large Skipper
Comma - digi-binned using my phone through my binoculars
Silver Washed Fritillary
this is the rare aberrant form 'Valezina' of the female Silver Washed Fritillary - it has no orange pigmentation
Peacock butterfly
Brimstone
This is a Pellucid Fly (or Hoverfly) it is a polymorphic mimic ( a fly with differnt morphs that mimics a bumble bee) I took this picture in Debbie and Nick's garden which was also full of butterflies
Other species seen were: Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Holly Blue, Large White, Small White, Green-veined White, Red Admiral and Small tortoiseshell.