Ten days ago, on Monday 15 June, I caught a couple of early morning trains heading up one of the south Wales valleys to meet a friend for a walk and catch up. My concern that we were probably a little late for the butterflies we might have hoped to see proved to be well founded – we would have looked earlier but I had avoided all-day walks during the heatwave and the previous week had seen a lot of rain, which is not the weather for butterfly hunting.

However, we got lucky! Just as we approached the kissing gate in to the fenced area of Aberbargoed Grasslands National Nature Reserve, a small butterfly flitted up from the path ahead of us. This was my first Small heath (Coenonympha pamphilus) of the year, a relatively common butterfly and not one most people would get excited about, but it’s a species that is no longer found in the coastal location where I live so I was very happy to see it. We carried on.

As we walked along the rather lumpy-bumpy, soggy-boggy tracks across the main field, my heart skipped a beat each time a little orange butterfly appeared near us. They all proved to be Large skippers, always nice to see but not what we were hoping for. Then, finally, towards the middle of the field, something bigger fluttered up and around the vegetation. Though the brief season for Marsh fritillaries had obviously already finished, we had found the last remaining Small pearl-bordered fritillary (Boloria selene) of the year at this site (a fact confirmed later during a conversation with a local ecologist who told us both of the fritillary species had already finished and was surprised we had spotted anything).