The cloudy start to the day soon gave way to scorching summer sun making the butterfly photography at Brockadale very hard work by mid-afternoon. I’d hoped the overcast conditions would have been ideal and allowed me to get some images of those high speed flyers – dark green fritillaries. The hot sun put paid to that and, in fact, I only had one attempt at a rather tatty individual. The meadow browns were far more amenable to posing as they fed on the meadow scabious and, in the end, I simply set my camera up on one of the flower heads and waited. There were so many meadow browns and marbled whites on the wing, it was only a matter of time before an insect landed on my flower!

In the end, I managed to get an image or two of dark green fritillary, gatekeeper, meadow brown, a lovely colourful cricket perched on a bramble leaf, a hoverfly approaching clustered bell flower and two pints of cold beer in the Shoulder of Mutton :¬)