After some early morning rain, a grey but dry ‘early rounds’, with the familiar late summer smells of wet grass, the bitter tang of Bracken, sweet Honeysuckle and the sea filling the air.
As the meadows mellow to softer shades of gold, the downland is looking truly spectacular. The shorter turf is carpeted with the tiny white, yellow and purple (if you look closely!) flowers of Eyebright, studded with the purple flowers of Dwarf Thistle. Anthills are covered with dense mats of Wild Thyme, with Ox-eye Daisies (long finished in the meadows) bobbing in the breeze.
Dense tangles of pink and white candy-striped Restharrow jostle for space with ‘dusty’ pink Red Bartsia, among a ‘forest’ of the yellow spikes of Agrimony, now partly covered with prickly burrs. Woolly Thistles are growing taller and more ferocious – a few now as tall as my chest, with Wild Carrot, Wild Parsnip and the similar but unrelated Yarrow among the taller flowers.
A rather soggy looking Gatekeeper flutters over a Bramble patch, with a magnificent female Great Green Bush-Cricket (the fierce-looking long spike at the end of her abdomen not a weapon, but an ovipositor with which she lays her eggs). Field and Meadow Grasshoppers bounce among the longer grass.
Red and yellow Birdsfoot Trefoil, Yellow-wort, Centaury, and Field and Devilsbit Scabious are also in bloom – all of this morning’s diary so far all found in one small former quarry hollow among the meadows!
Elsewhere around the downs, Burdock is in flower (with the largest leaves of any plant at Durlston!), with our tallest annual, Great Mullein also flowering, while the spiky heads of Teasels are dappled with lilac flowers. Next to the new path along the top of Long Meadow, Houndstongue is in bloom – lovely, velvety burgundy flowers and an unusual square stem and leaves which when crushed smell like a hamster cage which needs a clean!
Along the cliffs, a Peregrine Falcon perches near the Observation Point, a Buzzard circles above Durlston Bay and the croak of a Raven echoes from the depths of the woodland.