Marbled white

Another busy day! Having picked up the car at 10am, Pete and I drove down to Bedfordshire and I spent the morning recording fixed quadrats in developing acid grassland in a sand quarry. Fortunately the weather wasn't too hot - the quarry's enclosed by woodland and can be like an oven.

Pete helped with setting out the tapes and spent the rest of the time catching bees and wasps, including plenty of bee wolves, a formerly rare species which has increased considerably as a result of climate change. It gets its name because the female wasps capture feeding honeybees, sting them in order to induce paralysis and then carry the bees back to their nests as food for their larvae.

In the afternoon it was Pete's turn to work, surveying an old plum orchard at Clophill. I helped catch a few insects, but also spent some time lying on the grass relaxing among drifts of small skippers, meadow browns and marbled whites, the first I've seen this year. We also saw the first painted lady of the year, feeding on ragwort.

Marbled whites Melanargia galathea are found in unimproved grassland where the grass grows fairly tall. The largest colonies are found on downland but even small strips of grassland, such as a road verge, field margins, woodland clearings and disused railway lines can contain smaller colonies. It seems to have become more frequent in eastern England in recent years, though is always a pleasure to see. Today most of them were very busy flitting around in a sheltered corner with thistles, ragwort and ox-eye diasies, but I managed to sneak up on this one, who didn't seem very bothered by me at all.

Tomorrow I have a particularly long day of fieldwork - so I may not get around to blipping (shock horror!). And I'll try to catch up wih all your journals at the weekend.