Wasp Orchid

A very windy visit to a Rutland nature reserve, full of interesting limestone plants and an extraordinary number of Marbled White and Dark-green Fritillary butterflies. There was a good variety of other insects too, including the vivid metallic-green beetle Crytocephalus auroleus sitting on a Hairy Hawkbit head, a small nationally scarce chafer Omaloplia ruricola which only lives in limestone grassland and a juvenile Tortoise Bug Eurygaster testudinaria. But the highlight for me was finding my first ever Wasp Orchid Ophrys apifera var. trollii - in truth just a variety of Bee Orchid, but a very handsome one indeed.