A blaze of unexpected colour - shield your eyes...

Yippee! This is more like it! I have dutifully brought you a series of small and interesting moths the last few days, but I have secretly been yearning for colour. Here it is! We're having a family bramble-bash/gardening marathon this weekend at my late Mum's garden, ready for a fun commemoration of her life later this month. The sun's blazing and the butterfleis are out - I'm glad to say; there haven't been as many so far in this warm spell as I'd have expected. I think it's coincided with a time when one brood is almost over and the next one not quite hatched.

AND the moths were out too. The two top pictures are a day-flying Six Spot Burnet which enjoys the sunshine as much as any butterfly and has an equal dislike of the dark. After posing on the thistle for a while, it whirred off like some bizarre helicopter until I found it again on the grass blade. The flight method is strange indeed but colourful, as the red hindwings are particularly prominent if blurred by rapid flapping. I'll try to catch one in motion with the camera today.

My bramble-bashing also disturbed lots of the pretty creature in the third picture - Yellow Shells which are sort-of day-flying in that they doze lightly in hedges and are only too pleased to take a little flight if disturbed. And the butterflies were out too: Tortoiseshell, Comma, the first Red Admiral I've seen this season, assorted Whites and this Meadow Brown (right - and look at its wing 'struts' like an old biplane's) and Ringlet (above, swoon). The last two were the only ones which settled long enough for my ageing photographic methods. They have mothy brown colours, but aren't they lovely? I still remember my excitement when I first caught a Ringlet in the old netting days. Probably around 1958... So here's another one - and below that, a couple of Meadow Browns getting ready to make sure that next year sees a good lot too.