Friday 10 March 2017

A Few Things from The Summer on Portland

Portland is deservedly famous for rare birds but it's also a great place for wildflowers and invertebrates. Here's a few photos from May and June.

MAY

  
Hoary Cress Lepidium draba




Hairy Rock-cress - Arabis hirsuta



Rosy Garlic - Allium roseum



Yellow Vetch - Vicia lutea
 




Small Blue - Cupido minimus




Egg of Small Blue on Kidney Vetch.


JUNE



Sea Clover Trifolium squamosum


Bastard Toadflax - Thesium humifusum



Down Shieldbug - Canthophorus impressus

A rare shieldbug associated with Bastard Toadflax 



Small Elephant Hawkmoth -  Deilephila porcellus

This is a species I never did catch in my moth trap. I cheated a bit here by fishing this one out of the Portland Bird Observatory's Trap for a photo shoot.



Wild Asparagus - Asparagus prostratus



Four-leaved Allseed - Polycarpon tetraphyllum

We actually walked right over these diminutive plants on the ridge at Ferrybridge whilst actively looking for them!
We'd given up and were walking back to the car park when we finally spotted them and once we'd seen one others were more obvious, making us wonder how we originally missed them.



Early Gentian - Gentianella anglica


Lackey Moth Caterpillar - Malacosoma neustria  


 Lulworth Skipper - Thymelicus acteon


Silver-studded Blue - Plebeius argus

 

4 comments:

Gibster said...

Great to see the Asparagus looking so well, haven't seen her for well over a year now.

Karen Woolley said...

Sorry Seth. That is not she, it's a plant from the reintroduction on Portland. I'm hoping to see the original plant this year having only just found out the exact-ish location.

Gibster said...

Well that's kinda confusing...the original 'she' had Cornish lad's pollen shaken all over and hence the seedlings all around. So far as I'm aware there's just that one patch (near the green box on Hamm Beach)in existence, in a Dorset context at least. Smart looking beastie regardless!

Karen Woolley said...

Some of her offspring have been re introduced to the Portland mainland on a clifftop site there are several plants doing quite well.