NFY: Small skipper

24 Wednesday Jun 2026

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The butterflies are emerging in a steady flow now; for four days in a row last week I saw a new species each day – one day I saw two. My first two Small skippers (Thymelicus sylvestris) popped up at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park on Sunday 14 June; the beautiful creature shown here was the second of them. Although I did get a reasonable photo of the first Small skipper I saw, I’ve chosen these images for two reasons. Firstly, with the butterfly perched feeding on a Pyramidal orchid, this scene is much more photogenic.

Secondly, if you look closely at my second photo, you’ll notice that the butterfly has something attached to the end of its proboscis. These are pollinia, little packets of pollen that some flowers have specifically to aid in pollination. When a creature like a bee pokes its head into the flower, the sticky pollinia will attach themselves to its head and so, when the bee next pokes its head into a flower, the pollen from the first flower will rub off onto the second. Bee orchids also have these pollinia, and I’m guessing this lovely Small skipper has a particular preference for feeding on orchids.

A sweet young Robin

23 Tuesday Jun 2026

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Is this not the sweetest little Robin you’ve ever seen?

I simply can’t walk past a juvenile Robin without stopping to say hello.

Though their feathers look nothing like those of adult Robins – no red breast to be seen, they already act like adults: confiding, curious, bobbing their heads and flicking up their tails.

And so, of course, I had to stop, pull out my camera, and take far too many photos while this sweet young Robin posed like a professional model.

NFY: Clouded yellow

22 Monday Jun 2026

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Saturday week ago I walked one of my regular circuits, touching the edge of Cardiff Bay near the swimming pool and ice rink, following the riverside Taff Trail a while, then veering inland across a recreation area called The Marl and around the edge of Grangemoor Park. As I walked the path between the pool and the ice rink, something small and light coloured fluttered up from a scruffy area that has been colonised by a colourful mix of wildflowers. A Clouded yellow (Colias croceus)! I don’t usually see these butterflies until much later in the summer so I’m guessing this gorgeous burst of sunshine in insect form was blown north by the heat-wave southerlies during the last week of May. Fortunately for me, the butterfly settled again very quickly and close to the path so I was able to get a few photos.

Orchids at Grangemoor Park

21 Sunday Jun 2026

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During a recent wander around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park, I was delighted to spot four different species of Britain’s native orchids. I thought our unseasonal heatwave in late May might have caused the orchids to frizzle but I think the fact that the record-breaking high temperatures were followed immediately by a week of rainy weather has meant that the orchids growing at Grangemoor and in other local parks are looking particularly lush this year. Here’s a selection …

Bee orchids (Ophrys apifera)

I have an ambition to get a photo of all three species – Bee, Common spotted and Pyramidal – growing together but I’ve yet to find them. These are Common spotted and Bee.

Another Common spotted-orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsia)

Pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis), in the usual pink colour

White Pyramidal orchids – I’ve seen these given the scientific name Anacamptis pyramidalis var. albiflora (on the FirstNature website), but that name is not included in the list for recording purposes.

Southern marsh-orchid (Dactylorhiza praetermissa). These hybridise easily with Common spotted so it took a while to find a true Southern marsh.

Orange-tip larvae

20 Saturday Jun 2026

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Adult Orange-tip butterflies may now have died away for this year but not before completing their life’s purpose, mating and egg-laying to ensure the continuation of their species. (The egg shown below was photographed on Garlic mustard on 15 May.)

Orange-tips overwinter as pupae, not something I’ve ever seen but, if you look now at the plants their larvae munch on, you’ll probably spot caterpillars of various sizes.

Their favourite larval plants are Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis) and Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) but they will also use other crucifers: Hedge mustard, Winter-cress, Turnip, Charlock, Large bitter-cress and Hairy rock-cress, according to Peter Eeles in Life Cycles of British & Irish Butterflies.

Looking at the excellent photos in Peter’s book, I think the larvae shown in my photos are all late instars; the larvae go through five different stages before they pupate. Eeles writes that the pose shown in the photo above is characteristic of a 5th instar larva.

I’ve made myself a note to look for a pupa near the many Garlic mustard plants on which I found these larvae, though I’m not very hopeful of finding any, as Eeles notes that the larvae often travel quite a distance to find a suitable plant; they don’t use the larval plants as these die back during the winter months.

NFY: Meadow brown

18 Thursday Jun 2026

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Most co-operatively, as I had specifically gone looking for it, my 22nd butterfly species for 2026 appeared flitting up and down among the long grasses and wildflowers of a local meadow on Sunday 7 June, a breezy day but warm enough in sheltered places. And then another appeared, and a third, and, more distantly, a fourth, though I only managed to get this one photo. As with many butterfly species, the males emerge before the females and then spend their time racing madly around looking for females to mate with and sprinkling their pheromones on to the vegetation. This is, of course, a Meadow brown (Maniola jurtina).

Not Bank swallows

16 Tuesday Jun 2026

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During last week’s wander around Cardiff Bay and on in to the city I paused for a wonderful 20 minutes to watch the Sand martins flitting constantly in and out of their nests in every available gap, hole and crevice in the walls of the Bay’s many old docks.

Their activity has reached a level of frantic that means I can safely assume they’re now feeding young.

In North America the Sand martin is known as the Bank swallow, something I didn’t know until quite recently when a man tried a little too forcefully to tell me (the term ‘mansplaining’ applies here, I think) that the birds I was watching and listening to were Bank swallows, rather than Sand martins, because that’s what his Merlin bird app told him.

(Note to Merlin users: if you live in the UK, make sure you change your settings to British bird names!)

Southern pill woodlouse

15 Monday Jun 2026

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Until I was filing away my recent photos of this creature, I’d forgotten that I actually saw one – my first, the one shown below – tootling along amongst the stones and sparse vegetation in King Barrow quarry on the Isle of Portland during my visit last September.

I spotted this second beast on a wall in a local street very recently. And, at around 12mm long (measured by taking a photo of my left index finger right next to it), this crustacean really was a beast, and, according to the Naturespot website, they can grow to 20mm so this one wasn’t even fully grown.

Meet the Southern pill woodlouse (Armadillidium depressum), a creature that curls itself into a ball when threatened and which can be distinguished from your common or garden Pill woodlouse (Armadillidium vulgare) by the way the sections of its armadillo-like outer skin curve up slightly at the ends.

Rosy garlic

14 Sunday Jun 2026

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The words ‘rosy’ and ‘garlic’ don’t seem to sit well together, the former associated with the sweet aromas that have inspired perfume makers for centuries, the latter with a pungent smell you either love or hate to cook with and/or eat. Here, though, the word ‘rosy’ relates to the colour of the plant’s flowers rather than its smell and, for me, this is a very attractive flower, particularly when the plants are found growing in good numbers as they were in an area of the Broadcroft Quarry Butterfly Reserve on the Isle of Portland.

As you may have worked out, this plant is a member of the Allium family that includes edible plants like garlic, the various species of onion, leeks and chives, as well as ornamental plants like Three-cornered leek, Field garlic and Star-of-Persia.

Rosy garlic (Allium roseum) is a Mediterranean species, not native to the UK, and is often seen in gardens, from which it has escaped and naturalised in areas of waste ground, mostly in southern Britain, particularly in coastal locations.