MARBLED WHITE BUTTERFLIES - MELANARGIA GALATHEA

We had a great service at Church this morning when we heard from Dave Clarke, the leader of Swindon Youth for Christ about the work they are doing in the town.  Apparently, SYFC has been working in Swindon since 1950 and I remember going to meetings in the mid 1950s with the members of the Youth Group I attended at the time.  

It was interesting to hear from Dave about the projects that they run now for young people, and of course, in this digital age, it is very different from when I used to go because we had no internet or mobile phones.  

Way back then we went to meetings on a Saturday evening in a school hall, but today the Youth for Christ workers and volunteers take the Good News out and about during the week and are very much involved in schools, on the streets, in parks, playgrounds and open spaces and are much more connected with local churches and communities all over the town.  Dave was a very enthusiastic speaker, telling us about his passion for young people and the fact that his desire was to share the Gospel with them and to see them coming to faith.  In fact, he was so enthusiastic, I told him afterwards, when I saw he was wearing a Fitbit that he must do thousands of steps, because he waved his arms about so much!

As usual after Church we went out looking for dereliction and we did find some - but that will wait for another Sunday, because when we pulled into a field at Sevenhampton to eat our picnic, we saw hundreds of butterflies around the thistle flowers.  I hadn’t put the macro lens in, sadly, but this is the best shot I took - standing in the middle of the thistles, and just turning around.  We couldn’t believe how many butterflies we saw and it was so peaceful and quiet that they stopped for quite a long time on each flower.  

Of course, when we got home, the difficulty was choosing one photograph, but this one won the day, with two butterflies on the thistles.  Mr. HCB looked in his Concise Guide to Butterflies, and believes this is a Marbled White - according to the book it lives in colonies on grassland, is often abundant and is attracted to knapweed, scabious and thistles.

We went for a walk along the side of the field we had parked in and found a strange place - a walled area with a small barn and ten bee hives - there were quite a lot of bees around them, but we didn’t want to disturb them, so didn’t stay long.  There is a farm nearby, so perhaps we should go and ask them about it.  We both remarked on how peaceful it was to be right away from the traffic, the only sounds being the wind rustling the leaves in the trees and the birds singing.  

We got home in time for Mr. HCB to see the last twenty minutes of the football when England trounced Panama - so he was happy!

“We delight in the 
     beauty of the butterfly, 
          but rarely admit the changes 
               it has gone through 
                    to achieve that beauty.”
Maya Angelou