Friday 9th August 2013

Thursday evening after picking up Jools, we head home to feed the cats and then head back out up to Foxhill Down to hunt for Chalkhill Blues. Now, once upon a time, every time we saw a blue butterfly, we would think it was a Chalkhill, and then we began to look into things and it seems there is more than one sort of Blue. In fact there are lots. Some Blues in fact appear as browns, some Blues are green. Some Browns are white too.



So, Chalkhills like to live on chalk downlands. Now, just to confuse locals, what we call downs are in fact hills. It does not confuse the Chalkhills, they just live on the hills flittering about. And near the white cliffs, there are very fine chalk downlands. The easiest way to get to them, is the park at the NT’s place and walk up. Despite it feeling like a still day, there was a brezze blowing up on the down, but it was easy enough to find spots out of the wind, and there Chalkhills were everywhere, either settled on plants feeding on nectar or flying inbetween.



In the end, the best way to snap them was to get down on my belly and kind of crawl up to them. In this way I got very close to a couple of Blues, and they seemed happy enough.



Back home and time for dinner: I had already made a huge pan of pasta salad, enough it seems for everone on the street. Anyway, the badgers will probably eat it. Probably. And then I prepared and cooked pan fried breaded aubergine. And very nice it was too; one of my favourite meals and one that is just as good cold the next day as it was the day it was made. Which is just as well, really…..

And Scotland is pregnant and expecting its first panda baby. Probably, which means a good time to post his from Who Dares Wins.



They'd better be careful with a baby Panda in scotland, if its seen, it'll be battered and fried!