A glorious summer morning, with white clouds racing across a deep blue sky and the wind dancing through the grasses in the meadows.
Spectacular displays of wildflowers, as the meadows reach their midsummer peak, with thousands of pink Common Spotted Orchids in swarms of dozens each. In Long Meadow, a couple of hybrid Common Spotted x Southern Marsh Orchid, with black spotted leaves, but the dark purple flowers and long green bracts of a Sothern Marsh Orchid.
Extravagant Bee Orchids are scattered across the meadows and downs, along with the first few Pyramidal Orchids just starting to open.
Ox-eye Daisies are growing taller by the day, swaying in the breeze, with a haze of blue Pale Flax in some fields (best seen early in the morning, as they shed their petals as the day goes on).
A dense carpet of the semi-parasitic Yellow Rattle forms the ‘undergrowth’ in these miniature jungles, with the tangled leaves and yellow flowers of Meadow Vetchling, the curious globular flowerheads of Salad Burnet, Bulbous and Meadow Buttercup and the gloriously named Corky-fruited Water Dropwort (a delicate member of the Umbellifer family).
The downs are almost as colourful, with fine displays of Birdsfoot Trefoil, blue Wild Clary, tiny Quaking Grass, trembling in the breeze and the lemon-yellow flowers of Crosswort, to name just a few.
In the Saxon Field, a lovely patch of Burnet Rose is in bloom, as the sounds of carolling Skylarks fills the air. Whitethroats reel out their scratchy song from patches of Hawthorn and Blackthorn, with the squawk of a Pheasant echoing across the valley.
Down on the cliffs, Guillemots are busy feeding fast-growing chicks, with many dashing in and out from the cliffs. Razorbills also have chicks, with a few, noticeably blacker adults bobbing on the water below the cliffs.
Great Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Fulmar and Shag also on the wing around the cliffs, with a Peregrine perched near the Observation Point and a noisy gang of Jackdaws circling above the Clifftop Trail. Rock Pipits catapult up into the air from the clifftop, before parachuting down on outspread wings and tail.