A hot and dry June brings out the bee, fragrant and pyramidal orchids here on the North Downs; it seems a good year for them all even though the ground is parched. There are also droves of meadow browns, marbled whites and skippers. The dark green fritillaries are on the greater knapweed Centaurea scabiosa in…
Tag: Dark green fritillary
Great storms and butterflies at Trimouns, Luzenac
Above Luzenac near the end of the road to the huge talc quarry, there is a track that runs east below some mature beech woodland. There are fine views to the south across the valley of the high mountain chain and the storms that build over them each afternoon. The clouds run in from the…
Col du Pradel and upper Rebenty valley
23rd June, 2023 This is my favourite Col, with a narrow road that in places is now deep in cow manure as the herds have been moved up to the mountain grasslands for the summer; each is about 30 to 40 grey, white cows, many with huge bells hung round their necks, accompanied by their…
The Welsh Marches
A unique patchwork of fields rolls over the valleys around Church Stoke. The farms are mixed; winter wheat, rye grass silage fields, and pastures grazed by sheep, and dairy and beef cattle, but the overriding impression is of fields of green. The intensive agriculture means the fields no longer hold many curlews and lapwings but…
Old friends…
On a warm day with strong sunshine and few periods of persistent cloud, we took the sunken footpath up from Shoreham station. The ancient byway was flanked by veteran beech trees with smooth, silver grey trunks above exposed roots that twisted out of the ground. On White Hill, the fragrant, man, pryamidal and common spotted…
Box Hill
Box Hill is 30 degrees in the midday sun and lean cyclists in colourful jerseys pedal hard up the narrow road that zig-zags through steep slopes of chalk grassland with patches of dogwood, whitebeam and bramble topped by woodland dominated by beech, ash and hanging yew. The landscape tells a complex story of clearance, abandonment…
Lullingstone Park
The long walk up from the old, red brick manor house at Lullingstone, now promoted to a castle, leads to neatly mown paths through chalk grasslands that cushion wide fairways and greens. The meadows are rich in yellow and white flowers: bedstraws, trefoils, fading oxeye daisies Leucanthemum vulgare, patches of yellow rattle Rhinanthus minor and spikes of agrimony Agrimonia sp amongst…