Silver-spotted

I thought my nearest colony of Silver-spotted Skippers had been lost as I hadn't seen them in early August when numbers tend to peak. This is a real heat-loving butterfly which needs a  temperature of at least 20 degrees to fly. So its apparent absence was probably me being in the right place but at the wrong temperature. This morning the temperature finally reached the magic 20 degrees and I set off with the spaniel to check for Skippers. I wasn't disappointed - they were in the usual spot flying at speed just above the flower-packed turf and seldom stopping. Wonderful to see this most charismatic of butterflies that faced near extinction in the 1970s and was only to be found in two locations across the county. Its remarkable recovery, which is still underway, is one of the few success stories for our local butterflies in recent years.