Large skipper

After a huge flush of butterflies early in the season, many common species have now apparently become scarce or disappeared, becauses they're between generations - the June lull. However , there are plenty more butterflies to come, and I saw two of these in the garden today - meadow brown and large skipper.

The large skipper Ochlodes faunus is the earliest of the common skippers to appear and can be distinguished from small and essex skippers by its larger sizeand the mottled pattern on its wings. When I showed my photographs to Pete he said it was clearly a male but wouldn't tell me why - I've now found out that the male has a distinctive dark sex brand on its forewings, containing specialised scent scales. The caterpillars live on coarse grasses. We leave part of our lawn to grow long and have been rewarded by the establishment of a small colony of these pretty little butterflies over the last two years.

Otherwise another fairly quiet domestic sort of day. Ben had his first orthodontist'sappointment (another trial) but was relieved to learn that there's an 18month wait for treatment! I managed to finally plant the tomatoes (which were looking quite sickly) and some spinach and do a spot of weeding. Alex spent the afternoon doing a mock English IGCSE exam. He's mildly dyslexic and has always struggled with writing, but managed to cope with three hours of comprehension and essay writing really rather well, though punctuation and paragraphs were sometimes a bit sparse! Just hope he manages a repeat performance on Wednesday - our last exam of the year!