Tuesday, June 10, 2014
An afternoon walk up the quarry road brought the invisible wood warbler still singing deep in the woods on the river bank; and a spotted flycatcher. It flew towards me, probably checking me out. A second bird was seen deeper into the trees, so I walked on feeling a bit guilty. Hope they don't desert the site.
A fritillary danced along the bank in front of me and landed for a few seconds before a second one disturbed it and they both disappeared.
It looked smaller than the pearl-bordered fritillary I saw a couple of weeks ago, so I hoped it was the....yes, the small pearl-bordered fritillary. Because I didn't see the underwing I assumed there was no way of identifying it.
But there is. Comparing today's picture with those I took of the PBF, I realised that there are differences in the upper wing. The excellent ukbutterflies.co.uk (with usual prefix) confirmed my observations and added a couple more; so I'll put this down as my first small pearl-bordered fritillary.
// posted by Christine @ 10:26 AM 
