Under thundery skies, the herbaceous borders at Boisjarzeau are at their colourful best. The wet spring this year has saved on the watering but the garden meadows are unusually thick with false oat-grass and barren brome with little space for wildflowers. A sward full of yellow rattle would impede the grasses and promote floral diversity but it is hard to establish.

The fields between Boisjarzeau and Bellon are either yellowing barley fields or emerging sunflowers; there are turtle doves feeding and drinking at puddles in the nearby farm and ‘purring’ from the dense woodlands. Where the roadside verges have not been mown, there are lizard and pyramidal orchids and under the oak woodland, a handful of diminutive, red helleborines.

The butterflies are not as plentiful this year; meadow browns are of course the exception. Colonies of violet or weaver’s fritillary, one of the prettiest butterflies, are regular in the forest rides around the old Moulin de Perdrigeau. The June flora includes abundant ox-eye daisy, flax and a few Deptford pinks. The plantation forest also still holds breeding hen harrier and pair of honey buzzards and hobbies are somewhere close. The sight of the female harrier chasing off a buzzard is a sure sign that there are young in the nest and with both adults hunting to provision the young, this means they are getting large. In a clearing, we watch and listen as a tree pipit and yellowhammer sing from the same old mother oak; a linnet does the same nearby; and Dartford warblers and lesser whitethroats buzz and rattle from the gorse and heather scrub below.

The flora at the Plateau d’Argentine, just over the border in the Dordogne, is a pelouse calcaire, literally a calcareous lawn, and includes a diversity of plants that hug the gravelly, limestone soil; the best is Carduncellus mitissimus which is a sort of ground thistle but sky blue in colour. There are also abundant stonecrops, lichens, flax, eyebrights and a pretty, low growing pink Convolvulus, which I think is woolly bindweed Convolvulus lanuginosus. Under grey skies the Adonis blues are slow to move far and a marbled fritillary appears freshly emerged on the bramble scrub. I think this was also present at the Tourbières de Vendoire, the bright orange fritillaries were flying rapidly and landing high in the alder trees where they were frenetically mating. There were no scarce large blues which was unsurprising given there not a sign of its foodplant, great burnet. Mid June was simply too early in the year.