The Chilterns experience

After a day spent in the car and largely indoors yesterday, it was such a relief to be outdoors this morning. I recorded my butterfly transect at the nature reserve and then checked for butterflies and other insects on neighbouring land in the valley. It was good to see lots of whites and Peacocks and a few Common Blues and Small Coppers after a month of seeing hardly any. This is my favourite chalk slope, looking towards the ex-arable fields we are restoring to chalk grassland. This wonderful old grassland fragment is exceptionally rich, with two types of gentian and Devil's-bit Scabious both getting close to flowering. The view sums up the Chilterns for me.