Christmas present

I went to Oxfordshire today, for a long-overdue catch-up lunch with my sister, and en route I stopped off at the National Trust car park on Watlington Hill, and took a little walk around Christmas Common in search of butterflies. A couple of weeks ago - I know, because a friend photographed them - there were Silver-spotted Skippers on Christmas Common, but today the best I managed to come up with were a few Common Blues and a handful of Small Heaths. This wasn't particularly surprising, because it's a little late in the season and the wild marjoram which is favoured as a nectar source by the late summer downland butterflies is now going over. It was also a darker and danker morning than had been forecast, and if I'd gone back this afternoon, when it was brighter, I might have had more luck, but my sister and I spent the whole afternoon engaged in what our long-suffering husbands refer to as Competitive Talking, and by the time we said goodbye I was faced with ploughing home through Friday rush-hour traffic, and R ended up having dinner on his own.

Despite the relative lack of butterflies, I wasn't unhappy to have visited Christmas Common today. The last (and indeed, only previous) time I photographed Silver-spotted Skippers, I was teetering above the M40 on the precipitous bank of Aston Rowant NNR, a trip which I feared at the time might be my last on this earth, and which I haven't managed to summon the enthusiasm, or indeed, nerve, to repeat, so to know that I'll be able to hunt them next year on what by comparison is almost flat ground makes me quite optimistic for the 2023 butterfly season. I will definitely be back.

Of today's potential subjects, this Small Heath gets the nod because it's less common than the Common Blue, and I haven't posted one for quite a while. I note also that both the two I've previously blipped were shot with a long lens, because they're fast and skittish and don't generally let you get in close. So I'd just like to point out (not least to excuse its slight deficiency in front-to-back and top-to-bottom sharpness) that this was taken with the macro.