May 19th Mousehold Heath

Broom

It looked like a nice day despite for the odd dark cloud, but it wasn't raining. This made me decide on the fly to take a walk over to Mousehold to see if I can finally find myself my first green hairstreak of the year. They have been avoiding me so far and with a good spell of sunshine, I should see one today.

I got to Vinegar Pond and had some lunch before looking for these tiny green butterflies. When I had finished and began my search, a large, threatening cloud loomed over. A few drops of rain started to appear. Theoretcally, it was a light shower. In truth, I was getting wet. Good job I packed a coat before I left, but even so, it just soaked it up and got my trousers damp. I had no choice but to shelter under trees until it passed over. The rain was joined by hail and lasted for ten minutes. I was a bit worried as I heard a few rumbles of thunder nearby. Thankfully, though, the sun came back out in force.

The rays of sunshine was warm enough to evaporate the rain's dampness from my coat and trousers rather quickly. For a short few moments immediately after the shower had ended, water vapour floated upwards into the air from everything that was wet from the rain. Life, too, was back to normal like nothing had happend. Birds began to sing and dart into the gorse bushes with the sound of the feeding calls of hungry chicks from within the undergrowth somewhere. Bees and other insects resumed to pollinate the gorse and broom flowers. Just as the sun convinced me to come here in the first place, it had also convinced me to stay and continue my search. Was it too good to be true?



Green Hairstreak (from last year)

Another thing I had realized was that there no people when it was raining. I was here by myself. But when the sun returned, so did the people. It was like a magnet or something. The warmth of the sun was getting stronger and along the bare ground of the paths between the gorse bushes, green tiger beetles scurried at a pace by my feet. "That's one green thing, now for the other!" I said to myself. As soon as I uttered the words from out of my mouth, however, a green hairstreak appeared and landed on a gorse flower. Seeing it with my own eyes was one thing, finding it through the screen of my camera was another. As soon as I had found it with it, the butterfly took off and was gone!




Green Tiger Beetle

Absorbed in the search for another, I had not noticed the blue sky being covered by storm clouds. The sound of the sky growling with thunder made me decide it was time to go before I got wet again.