Durlston’s wonderful hay meadows are almost at their midsummer peak! Despite walking them several times a week for the last 20 Junes, they never fail to take my breath away!
Thousands of pink and white ‘raspberry ripple’ Common Spotted Orchids, in shades from almost white to dark purple form pools of colour among the grass. Bright pink Pyramidal Orchids are just starting to open, like little jewels, deep in the sward, while here and there, extraordinary-looking Bee Orchids can be found (described by a Victorian visitor to Swanage as looking “So uncannily like a Bee, we were half afraid of them”).
The white, disc shaped flowers of Wild Carrot and Corky-fruited Water Dropwort ‘hover’ above the grass, while around them, the blue flowers of Pale Flax and bold yellow and white Ox-eye Daisies bob in the breeze.
Thousands of the flowers of Rough Hawkbit (a tall, yellow-flowered Dandelion, with a coarsely hairy stem) blaze out of the grass like little suns, while below them pink Sainfoin, Yellow Rattle, Common Vetch, Birdsfoot Trefoil, Common Broomrape and Grass Vetchling form a dense carpet.
Meadow Vetchling (a pretty, yellow-flowered member of the Pea family) scrambles up a hedgerow, competing with Bryony, Honeysuckle and Cleavers.
Overhead, Skylarks are in full voice, with Linnets, Dunnocks, Lesser Whitethroats, Blackcaps, Chaffinches, Long-tailed Tits and Blue and Great Tits all seen or heard among flowering Hawthorn and Elder in the hedgerows.
One of the things that make the meadows so special is their transience – however stunning they are now, in just a couple of weeks time, they will look very different as the predominantly yellow and white flowers are replaced by more purple blooms and the grasses will fade from green to shades of bronze.
Down on the cliffs, Guillemots and Razorbills are busy feeding hungry chicks (to see them on the camera, pop into the Castle). Fulmars veer, stiff-winged around the clifftops, with Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Shag and Kestrel also on the wing.