Sandwich Bay

This is a lovely little flower which is becoming quite rare as well.

Tiny little yellow flowers on this alpine looking grown covering plant. Update: Biting Stonecrop.

Newly emerged Tortoiseshell butterfly waiting for some warmth on the Orchid.

My main reason for wanting to visit Sandwich Bay was the moths in the area, not only can you often find moths by day like this beautiful one, but they run 3-4 MV traps and have been running the same Actinic set up we use every day!!

So one of the reasons for our trip was a bit of Orchid hunting, This one is really one of the most spectacular Orchids, but terribly hard to photograph and not quite in full bloom yet.

These spindly 'tails' are really lovely but hard to get nice shots of.

If you look at the large image you can see he is just beginning to spin his pupa.

Another pupa, this one has spun but hasn't turned white yet.

On the walks and fields they manage they place several corrugated tins down to keep an eye on the reptile life that use them. We must have seen about 30 slow worms during the three days. They also often get Common Lizards and we saw one Grass snake enjoying the warmth. I think most folks will know what these are, but if you don't.. They are not actually worms or snakes but legless lizards. You can tell because they have eye lids and snakes do not. They are a protected species and we do actually have them in the Hastings, East Sussex area, but I've only ever seen one dead baby one and one detached tail.

Grrrr look at those teeth...lol