Christine's walking & birds blog

The field at Gruinard held common blue butterflies, a solitary golden-ringed dragonfly, and several burnet moths - this one on a (probable) northern marsh orchid.


We'd stopped here the previous day during a drive south, and I'd snapped a pale wildflower which also looked like an orchid. Research back home suggested butterfly orchid - but which one? Greater or lesser? Apparently the pollen sacs in the greater form an inverted V, while in the lesser they are two parallel bars. I went back today to check, wondering how on earth I would recognise the pollen sacs. But - with my glasses on - I could see them quite well.



It's clearly the lesser butterfly orchid - always the more likely of the two as it prefers acid soils. There were probably about twenty plants scattered about - but the whole site is threatened by creeping bracken.