SHOW US YOUR WINGS, SKIPPER!

A Skipper Butterfly and I was sure there was another butterfly of similar colour but a little bigger?

For those Butterfly enthusiasts into the finer details of said things this other Butterfly had the typical ... bounce in its flight that I did not think Skippers performed? Think of a White or a Brown in flight and it was like that. This was quite close to some Bee Orchids and some Pyramidal Orchids I was filming.

COMMA BUTTERFLY in 2014

A new year and a new set of British Wildlife films!

Let us hope I see a few things quite out of the ordinary this year?

So first up is a not out of the ordinary, well not of recent times that is for certain, a Comma Butterfly.

THE RETURN OF THE DEMOISELLES

My new favourites, no not 'old' favourites, the Banded Demoiselles!

So very cool and very reassuring to know that these are back and I am back there filming them because I was begiunning to wonder where in the hell the summer had gone?! Especially as we were supposed to be eight weeks into a roasting and in reality its been two days and a couple of days 6 weeks back.

Unfortunately this sudden rise in temperature combined with my sudden need to cycle for miles resulted in the most gargantuan of headaches that I get eevery year at this time. How much the temperature has risen will dictate just how bad the headaches are, especially the early ones.

I have long suspected this is down to dehydration and refer to them as my Dehydration Headaches and that the awareness of my condition of Fibromyalgia and the fact that this condition does indeed affect your ability to deal with extremes of heat and extreme changes in temperature I think that the body must also dehydrate very easily and quickly when it gets too hot too quickly?!

I normally takes a few weeks or more to acclimatise to the changes, bah humbug!

Now lets hope the waether stays good, though a little cooler would be nice, because there are a few things happening on other blogs over the next few weeks. So getting a start on this one along with some tropical Orchid stuff happening on another one and my technology blog getting some much needed content its exciting times indeed!

THE CANADIANS AND THE SWAN FAMILY

Odd here because I spot Canadian Pond Weed, no not the Elodea densa you buy for your Goldfish but the smaller, less bushy and more intricate Elodea canadensis.

I am sure I never spotted this before at this site?!

Also a family of Swans with young cygnets, numberig five, at Cornmill Stream that I will now keep an eye on when I can as Gwen would never forgive me otherwise! Lol!

FIRST SPOTTING OF BEE ORCHIDS SITE ONE

Well here I am at Site 1 and sure enough I have now gone two years in a row at seeing Bee Orchids there and yet for 5 years beforehand not a single bloody one?!

Queue Twilight Zone JINGLE!! Lol!

These are my first ones this year and my first PROPER venture out this year two, that I was not both extremely ill and suffering from heartbirn and then throwing up, lol.

COMMON SPOTTED ORCHID NEW SITE CONFIRMATION

Shocking myself by walking up to the same point I saw these Orchids last year or the year before by some miracle I filmed and can now confirm the existence of Common Spotted Orchids are Site 1 of my various sites.

Now I state that I walked to the same spot but while looking the same there were just two Orchids where last time I thought there were three of two different yes, I remembered them being closer together, but might have just been that one has not appeared alongside another just yet.

Also you have to remember that after spotting the Bee Orchids and Common Spotted Orchids last year I then SCOURED the area looking for other Common Spotted Orchids to no avail. I of course did this again after finding these but only found several Bee Orchids. Some of the buds of the latter were not open so I will go back up in a few days time and ... scour once again.

Also bear in mind that I have been visiting thhis site dozens of times each year for at least 6 maybe 7 years now and yet only in the last 12 months have I seen both Common Spotted Orchids at this site, not documented as far as I know, and Bee Orchids, which are documented as being here for sure.

So the most boring site of all the Orchid sites has now become the most ... intriguing!

PYRAMIDAL ORCHIDS JUNE 2014

First venture out, proper that is, this year and just in time to!

Now this is site number one using my definitions and the Pyrmidal Orchids were out in force, where when I was there last 6 weeks back and very ill there was no sign of them at all!

I do a pan shot video and get a few photos and videos of exceptionally coloured specimens.

Now I do not know how I did it but I walked directly the to the remarkably indistnguishable spot where either last year or maybe the year before I spotted three other Orchis species to the two I had read were on the site?! However it was a bit different because there were two and they were farther apart than I remember. Despite the flowers dried up and finished when I spotted them the first time I did think that of the three Orchids there were two types?! This time there were just two and they were both Common Spotted Orchids I will post up next.

Yes the Bee Orchids were also out but not like they were last year and in all honesty the grass and weeds have grown exceptionally high which may have hindered their growth due to bloking light. Even my garden and the edges of the local playing fields the grasses and weeds are three feet high and I have never seen them this high before, not even later in the year!

One part of the River Lea towpath even felt like I was being swamped in a section thats normally very open!