Green delight

I stopped off for half an hour this afternoon at NT's Bison Hill, Whipsnade, on my way to pick up family from Luton Airport. I remember this lovely patch of steep chalk grassland being good for butterflies, but today I was amazed at the numbers to be seen along one of the sunken trackways. Everywhere I looked there were butterflies and moths relishing the warm sun and abundance of flowers - Dingy Skipper, Grizzled Skipper, Common Blue, Duke of Burgundy, Burnet Companion, Mother Shipton, and the most striking of downland species, the Green Hairstreak. This particular Green Hairstreak, feeding on Horseshoe Vetch, had clearly been around for a while. There was some damage to the wing margins and to areas of wing scales, but it was still an absolutely magical sight.