Aston Rowant NNR 19th June

I Don't know why, but I've never been to this reserve in June. It's usually April for Ring Ouzels or July/August for Silver Spotted Skippers and then noticing loads of orchid seed heads around and wondering what species they could be, so this year I was determined to get there and find out. When I arrived there I couldn't believe what I had been missing, hundreds if not thousands of Common Spotted Orchids in full flower with Pyramidal and a few Fragrant's amongst them. Frog orchid and Greater Butterfly orchids were also seen during my visit.

 Common Spotted Orchid

 Common Spotted Orchid

 Common Spotted Orchid

 Common Spotted Orchids

 Common Spotted Orchid

 Common Spotted Orchid

 Fragrant Orchid"conopsea"

 Pyramidal Orchid

 Frog Orchid

Also in flower on the slopes were Dropwort in amounts i'd never seen before, there was loads of it.
A few clumps of Wild Candytuft were in flower and loads of Wild Thyme.

 Dropwort

 Dropwort

 Wild Candytuft

 Wild Candytuft

 Wild Thyme

While here I was also hoping to see some butterflies, mainly the Adonis Blue. It was cloudy but bright when I first arrived but the cloud did thicken during the time spent here. I did manage to see 1 Dark Green Fritillary while in the linky down area and a few Meadow Brown and Small Heath. After here I drove to the part of the reserve that's to the north of the M40 for the Adonis Blue. Unfortunately the weather was getting worse and then started to rain so no Adonis Blue's were seen although I did see a couple of Common Blue resting on grass stems and a single Marbled White.



 Marbled White

I might, just have to make another visit next week.