Holly Blue, Meadow Brown

Wild West Yorkshire nature diary
Sunday 1st 1999

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meadow brown FADED Meadow Browns are as tattered as the tall dry grasses along the waysides. One feeds on our Marjoram, which is humming with bees.

male holly blueunderwing of holly blue A more unusual visitor is a fresh-looking Holly Blue, a male. Each sky blue wing is no bigger than a finger-nail. The underwing has dark spots on a pale background. There are none of the orange markings you'd see on other blues.

storm over the old windmilldeluge over the wood After a hot sticky day, the sparse cumulus mushrooms into over-balancing towers within just half an hour in the late afternoon and a storm rolls in from the west. At first I confuse the thunder with a simultaneous roll of drums on the stereo. Huge drops start to fall within minutes and, in the next two hours, we have more rain than I remember in the whole of July. House alarms trill like cicadas. The thunder rolls and rolls, sometimes sounding like a jet fighter roaring low overhead.


frog, with yellowish stripe down its back There is a delicious coolness afterwards. A frog hops across the patio, while a mistiness rises over the meadow.


Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator

E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'

  
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