Hanna and I had a day out on our own recently. We dashed up to Oakham (twinned with Dodgeville, Wisconsin) to visit the UK's main Land's End outlet. Now that Hanna works at the village school, she has to have trousers and sensible footwear. However, there was a sale on and I ended up with a pair of trousers and she bought a nice top.
Having got the shopping out of the way, we popped round the corner to the Birdwatching Centre on Rutland Water, where we had a picnic and went for a walk. The reservoir is being enlarged so the nature reserve is retreating away from the shore, with a suite of new lagoons being created.
We didn't see the nesting ospreys, but the bird watching was still really good. However, the insects gave us more pleasure. I took a few pictures with my macro lens. (Leaf hopper and common blue butterfly).On the way home we stopped off at our favourite botanical site in Barnack. "Hills and Holes" is a medieval quarry where stones were mined for building our local churches and cathedrals. It's on oolitic limestone so it has a lot of plants that like calcerous soils, especially orchids. I particularly wanted to see man orchids, because I have never seen them before. They are small and green, so they take some finding, but, in the evening light, I was able to track them down on the sunny side of the hollows.
From a photographic point of view, the seeding pasque flowers were particularly rewarding. A few early purple orchids were still in flower. Pasque Flowers
In the next few weeks, we can look forward to pyramidal and bee orchids along with a host of other great flowers and butterflies.
Man orchid
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