Fly by day

Small pearl bordered fritillary, Arnside Knott

Cotoneaster can be an invasive plant on limestones, and it is established in places on Arnside Knott. Today it was showing that it is not entirely without virtue. The flowers were humming with bumblebees, and there were several freshly emerged small pearl bordered fritillaries feeding on it.

This is a rapidly declining species in the UK, so it was good to see a few of them in the sunshine this morning. Seen from above, it is very difficult to distinguish from the closely related pearl bordered fritillary, which is on the wing earlier in the Spring, but whose flight period does overlap with our butterfly. I did manage to get one shot of the underside which confirmed the identification. This has a mosaic of "pearls" across the underside as well as the pearly border.

The other species of interest seen in the big pasture was a Mother Shipton moth. This is not an uncommon species, though it is one I have never trapped in our garden half a mile away from this spot - perhaps because it is a day flying moth. It's worth a look at the link to the Blipfolio if you have time. This delightfully named species acquired its name for the likeness of the profile of an old hag in the patterned forewings. Mother Shipton was reputed to be a 17th century witch from the Knaresborough area in Yorkshire, famous for her prophecies of the demise of kings and noblemen, and said to be hideously ugly. Alternatively, she is a creature of myth, about whom stories were embroidered over three centuries. She is immortalised now in the name of a moth, and in that of a cave (which I have never visited, despite driving past signs to it a hundred times or more). I shall save for another time a blip on the naming of moths.

Something else of interest (to me at least) today, was finding another patch of fly orchids - within a few metres of a footpath, and clearly well known to at least some local naturalists.