Following on from yesterday’s post I’ll stay with the butterflies for the main part of today’s blog. The little meadow brown is one of our most common butterflies, but is often overlooked in favour of its more extravagantly robed cousins. After all, it is just a medium-sized brown butterfly that tends to keep low to the ground.
They are the ones you see on country walks, scattering away from approaching feet and settling in hedgerows. It’s easy to ignore them when a beautiful marbled white flutters by, or a dazzling peacock pauses on the path. For all that though, they are one of the mainstays of our butterfly population and, in the right circumstances, they brush up quite well.
This short sequence was taken in the garden on a patch of wild marjoram (which says something about the state of our garden, I guess).
Along with the butterflies, we’ve also been visited by some passing dragonflies. It’s always a treat to see these in the garden, though they tend not to stay too long. This first is – I think – a migrant hawker.
The second one is a common darter. We had some of these breeding in the pond a couple of years ago. The video (shot in 2011) shows the birth of a dragonfly.
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Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.