Light

Sometimes you just have to celebrate the light and form of a tree. This oak is on Baildon Bank and it looks like it might have been coppiced a long, long time ago.

I hadn't been out on the Bank since lockdown, not through lack of proximity, but my usual way out onto it involves long, narrow walkways. I fancied a change of scene though, so revised my route and was soon walking under the old quarry faces and enjoying the fine views over Airedale (extra).

Butterflies were not that plentiful, but I did see my first Small Copper of the year, another Wall, Large White, Green-veined White and Speckled Wood. Just as I was heading home I had a glimpse of another which may have been a Brown Argus, but I didn't get a good enough look to be confident in logging it as record.

I'll finish with my late Dad's recollections of VE Day, as experienced as a 14yo boy in our home village of Gronant 75 years ago today:

"Victory in Europe (VE) Day was memorable for two things in Gronant. Amplified music was blasted out from the Institute to all who cared to listen, and to many who didn't. And some brave character set fire to the gorse on the hillside behind Colomedy. The latter was more symbolic, ending for all the dread of showing a light after darkness had fallen.

And then the servicemen and women came home from the Navy, the Army and the Air Force, to the parties and the bunting, and the austerity of the post war years."



Butterfly Journal 2020

13.  08/05/2020 Small Copper, Baildon Bank