After one of the coolest, driest springs on record, May so far seems to have done a pretty good impression of what a typical April should be like. Our weather station recorded a mere 5.8mm of rain for the whole of April but by the 2nd of May we’d virtually equaled that at 5.6mm and a storm on the third day took us to 20mm!
At last on 18th May we saw some butterfly friendly weather and I took a trip down to the Cut-off Channel at Stoke Ferry to enjoy the springtime Grizzled Skippers, Small Heath, Brimstone and Orange-tip butterflies to be seen there.
Aside from a zooming Peacock, Small Heath were the first butterflies to show. As usual they chose awkward perching spots close to the ground amongst the undergrowth and leaf litter. I always forget how very small they are; the Common Daisy, Bellis perennis and Redstem Stork’s-bill, Erodium cicutariam, in this photo help to give some scale.
Next we enjoyed the sight of several Brimstones dancing on by. One briefly landed and its camouflage proved so convincing that a Nomad bee even landed on its closed leaf-mimicking wings for a rest!
Orange-tip butterflies were the most plentiful and confiding of the species we saw and I was lucky to spot two perched up mating, a first for me. They were perched on Hairy Rock-cress, Arabis hirsuta. Unfortunately for me, they weren’t entirely parallel and it was very breezy (the warmer than expected weather was brewing up a storm) so I couldn’t quite get both butterflies in focus simultaneously, but it was a lovely sight to behold nonetheless.
We’d managed to spot just a few Grizzled Skippers along the way but they too were restless and camera shy. But just as we turned to head for home one landed on a buttercup for a few seconds, making a perfect end to a lovely canal-side walk. For more information about the history of the man-made cut off channel canal you can visit its wikipedia page