Small Pearl

I headed out for a mammoth walk in the heat to try and track the small pearl-bordered fritillary butterfly which was a bit hit and miss to be honest.

They are starting to fly now and are hanging around with the pearl-bordered fritillaries which look incredibly similar, in fact so similar, it was just a question of well, it's orange and small so shoot it. Similar Pearl Bordered Fritillary in Extra. 

Almost every shot involved dropping to my knees or crouching down on the path as they like low growing plants such as Marsh Violet. Goodness they were flighty! 

Last night we had fun with the bat detector after sunset. We could hear the ultrasonic calls through the phone, view the echolocations on a colour spectrogram and it identified the type of bat flying overhead. We discovered that we have at least three different bats: the Common Pipistrelle, Nathusius' Pipistrelle, and a Western Barbastelle Bat which is a 'near threatened' species. This latter bat has a pug like face, with hairs coming out of his bottom lip like a beard. They eat moths which explains why they are round the security lights, live in tree hollows, crevices etc and can live to the ripe old age of 21. The young, 1-2  are being born about now. 

The Trail Cams caught 2 foxes again last night and I made sure they got into the camera spotlight by putting an egg down plus loads of peanuts which they loved. We can watch the action live through the security cameras when the internet behaves itself.