The Black Park has a grazing break for May, June and July. It is managed to encourage butterflies, specifically the Marsh Fritillary - which loves the Devil's bit scabious which flourishes in this field, in late summer.
The turf dykes create a perfect slightly drier habitat for the Birds foot trefoil, which the Six spot burnet moths love.
This field also has the most wonderful patch of Fragrant orchids and I wanted to see if there was any sign of them yet, in this late season.
There was purple Milkwort,
and some very stunted Northern marsh orchids.
The Butterfly orchids are just about to flower and I saw quite a few as I walked along the track. It was interesting to see that the Northern marsh orchids were so short, but beginning to flower, where the Butterfly orchids have grown to a height and then begun to flower. I did see one or two Fragrant orchids, but for some reason I didn't taken any photographs of them - despite them being my favourite flower!
A Heath spotted was growing well surrounded by Wood bitter-vetch.
It started to rain. And I started to walk home.
