Our wildlife group was busy staining the infrastructure around the hide and cutting the grass around the car park this morning.
Meantime Les & Andrew Corrall took a walk round and saw little change in the birds and butterflies on show except for a second brood Holly Blue.
Then out of the blue, Andrew saw what he thought was a Comma that turned out to be a magnificent male Silver Washed Fritillary flying around the tops of Hawthorns, flanked by Cherry, Beech, Sycamore and Alder, before it came down to feed on Greater Knapweed. No one else managed to see it, as soon after, the rain came down.
This was a first for this site and the first new butterfly species since the Dark Green Fritillary in July 2010, which was also found by Les and the late Ralph Hibbert.
Silver Washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia) (Les Corrall)
The underside (Les Corrall)
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