Butterfly Ball

Out of the wind there is a little warmth in the air, a treat in this cold Spring. The Cow Parsley has grown high to fill the space between the gravestones, their white flowers helping to show off clumps of bluebells.

Walking along one of the paths that winds its way along the edge of the hillside that Cemetery sits on is like walking down a woodland ride, there are clumps of Primroses and I can hear a Chiff Chaffs monotonous song.

A scrap of bright blue catches my eye as it fly's past, it could easily be a detached bluebell petal caught by the wind, but it purposefully gains height around a Holly Tree and is joined by another flying blue petal. They are Holly Blues and they dance around each other and the Holly, occasionally one will break off and disappear into the depths of the overgrown Cemetery, only for another blue scrap to appear and join in the dance, sometimes there are up to half a dozen taking part in this butterfly lek. Then when the sun goes behind a cloud and the temperature drops, they disappear, settled on a leaf, wings folded, blue hidden until the sun reappears, the temperature rises and the butterfly ball starts again.

Holly Blue taking time out from the Butterfly Ball

Cemetery Tick and other stuff

Common Buzzard, Rosary Cemetery, Norwich

I had a very enjoyable and productive lunchtime walk around the Rosary Cemetery in Norwich with a work friend today.The fine weather from the weekend was still with us and the cemetery looked wonderfully green highlighting the wonderful glowing red leaves of the Copper Beaches. Chiff Chaff's and Blackcap's were both in song and my friend heard a brief snatch of Swallow song, quite a mega record here.

Overhead I saw my first two Swifts of the year always a great sign of the impending arrival of summer. But the best bird of this short walk was a Common Buzzard high overhead mobbed my a Carrion Crow. Neither of us had a pair of binoculars with us and we wondered for a while whether this might be a Honey Buzzard, but came to the conclusion it was a Common Buzzard, something borne out by the heavily enlarged image above taken on my TZ30 compact camera

Holly Blue, Rosary Cemetery, Norwich

It was also great to see a few butterflies on the wing including perhaps my favourite UK species the Orangetip.

Male Orangetip, Rosary Cemetery, Norwich