Purple Haze

A wonderful day out at Saltfleetby-Theddlethorpe Dunes NNR, in North Lincolnshire. While Pete and Chris worked, sampling invertebrates in an area of grassland that is due to be enhanced,  Lizzy and I had a wonderful walk along the dune edge, finding all manner of interesting things including an old Comet tank half buried in the sand, acres of samphire, heart urchins, robber flies and a small patch of the very local Rock Sea-lavender (see extra).Highlights of the afternoon were finding a thriving stand of Marsh Helleborines, and briefly spotting a male Southern Migrant Hawker.


While we were waiting for Chris and Pete to finish we sat on the top of the viewpoint, which was cool and breezy, an ideal place to be on a very hot day. The saltmarsh stretched in front of us, striped in shades of green, ochre and purple with a very blue North Sea in the background. Later we walked over this stretch of marsh and admired the seemingly endless sweeps of Common Sea-lavender that are such a feature of this stretch of coast in August. As you can see from the extra photographs, social distancing wasn't a problem!