After baking under the sun over the last few days, the Park feels cooler and fresher this morning.
A cloudy, still night last night made for a great haul from the moth trap, which is bursting with an amazing variety of colours, shapes and species.
Highlights this morning included a magnificent pink and green Large Elephant Hawk Moth, longer than my thumb, along with it’s smaller, brighter pink cousin, a Small Elephant Hawk Moth.
A few eye-wateringly bright sulphur-yellow Brimstones, along with more intricately patterned Silver-Y’s, Figure of Eighty, Small Square Spots and Heart and Darts along with an elegant Angle Shades, to name just a few.
Out on the Park, the downland is dazzling at the moment, with every inch covered with a colourful embroidery of flowers. On the shortest turf, purple Wild Thyme dapples the grass, alongside the tiny white stars of Fairy Flax, blue Milkwort, buttery yellow Birdsfoot Trefoil and the delicate stems of Quaking Grass, bobbing gently in the breeze.
On the longer grass, Pyramidal and Bee Orchids abound, with streamers of honey-scented Ladies Bedstraw and white Hedge Bedstraw, with dusty-looking Red Bartsia (a semi-parasite of grasses) along the edges of many of the paths.
A large female Speckled Bush Cricket clambers up the stem of Salad Burnet, which bends under her weight, with lots of Field and Meadow Grasshopper bobbing through the grasses nearby.
In the meadows, some lovely patches of Sainfoin, Dyers Greenweed and Ox-eye Daisies. While past their best, there are still plenty of Common Spotted Orchids to enjoy, with Skylarks carolling high overhead.
Our Guillemots are busy feeding chicks along the cliffs (come along on one of our boat trips tonight or tomorrow, or pop into our ‘Guillemot Cinema’ for a closer look at them).
Fulmars, Razorbills, Shags, Great Black-backed Gulls and Herring Gulls circle the cliffs, with a few gleaming white Gannets passing out at sea.