Dorset beauties - and some at home too

 

We've just had a lovely week in Dorset, partly based at Bridport and partly in Weymouth and greatly blessed with sunshine at both. As is so often the case in the UK, this week has seen a complete turnaround in the weather with flash flooding in both towns.

I'm sorry for those who chose this week rather than last for their holidays, but it looks as though the sun is coming out again even if the temperatures are not as fiercely hot as they were for us. To some extent, I think that the hottest weather was too much for butterflies but we still saw a good collection as above - Painted Ladies, Comma, Gatekeeper, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock.

Along the banks of the little river beside which we stayed in Weymouth's outskirts, there were also plenty of small dragonflies which I plan to ID soon with the help of the excellent web pages of the British Dragonfly Society. Update: Actually my kind and very knowledgable commentor Conehead has got there first and suggest that they are a female Beautiful Demoiselle, a male Common Darter and a a female Red-eyed Damselfly.  Thanks so much!  Moth names are pretty unbeatable but the Odonata run them close. My best sighting, though, was of a Clouded Yellow butterfly on the cliffs above Ringstead Bay, a delectable spot shown in the picture below. The walk from the National Trust car park is long and steep but rewarding in every sense and the beach is bliss.

Colourful or pleasantly-patterned beauties were also waiting for us when we got home and lit the moth trap again - for example, the familiar little micro Pandemis corylana or the Chequered Fruit-tree Tortrix, the Common Carpet, the Common Rustic - a very variable species - and the Flame Carpet with its fine pinky-maroony central wing strip.

I was also delighted to find that delicately-named, patterned and coloured moth the Maiden's Blush in one of the eggboxes and the truly lovely Bordered Beauty in another, from which it decamped to my dressing gown. The third in the trip below is a Vestal, a pure-looking moth named after the temple virgins (usually at least) of ancient Rome, whose simple creamy toga with a pinky-purple stripe its colouring resembles.

Finally that rakishly distinctive regular the Angle Shades and a line of the children and grandchildren's washing, showing that we humans can brighten up the world too.