Day 24 - Wildflowers

Day 24 saw me out for another evening walk - this time, another one organised by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.

This evening, it was an organised walk at Hartington Meadows to see the meadows, the flowers found on limestone grassland and also visit a recently acquired part of the reserve which isn't open to the public (it's the site of an old quarry so considered too dangerous to allow free access to the public).

It was great! I learned a lot more this week than I did on the walk at Deepdale a week ago - that was good too but I knew a lot of those flowers already. Here I saw lots of new things as well as familiar ones.

And, of course, the surrounding scenery is pretty good here!  These fields are open to the public and there are footpaths through them too.

scorpion fly (female)

Common spotted orchid

Entering the 'not for the public' area

 
Early purple orchids were seen, flowering late this year after so much cold weather for the time of year.

Biting stonecrop

water scorpion (blurred as he was moving fast!)

horse leech

horse leech feeding on a slug

I saw my first grasshoppers of the year :) I love hoppers, I've been looking out for them!  I didn't take any good photos of them, but it was nice to see some.

frog orchid

The next three photos are fragrant orchids at different stages...

 

 

Thanks to Derbyshire Wildlife Trust for organising this walk - it was very interesting! I need to revisit in a few weeks though when things are further along (but before the meadows are cut for hay).

Also today, the 'shark pack' arrived after joining the Shark Trust on Saturday evening...

I had to rearrange the car sticker collection to accommodate the latest addition!

That's it - I'm up to date with the blog posting now after the busy weekend away. I just need to get the wallchart sorted now and have good catch up on reading other blog posts... roll on the weekend!