Painted

The day started with thick fog, but it cleared by lunchtime leaving a warm sunny afternoon to enjoy a long walk and a plethora of butterflies.

Starting in the graveyard with Red Admiral, Speckled Wood and Comma I then crossed the road to the community garden where this Painted Lady was the highlight, the first I'd seen since late spring. We had been promised a bumper year for these migrants, but that hasn't transpired in my neck of the woods, although as I left the garden I found another, dead on the pavement. 

Heading down to Tong Park and Spring Wood it was Speckled Woods all the way (like the two feasting on a blackberry in my second photo), with the occasional Red Admiral and Small Tortoiseshell and a couple of Silver Y moths. In combing the woodland edge I spooked a Little Owl which had been well secreted.

By the tarn there was some dragonfly activity, with Brown Hawker and Common Darter evident.

I then walked the length of Spring Wood and battled through the bracken on the moor to Sconce, then up the lane through Faweather to Weecher where I turned back to Birch Close Lane and along the horse gallops back to the moor. It was along the gallops that I got the biggest surprise of the day, a late flying Wall - the first I'd seen all year and a good couple of weeks past its usual flight time in our neighbourhood. I managed a distant record photo, but it flew off before I could get closer.

A final transect of the moor back to the village didn't throw up any more surprises but it had been another good day for wildlife in the late September sunshine.