Sheep in the buttercups

Prestwick Carr

It was peaceful out on Prestwick Carr in the evening sunshine during yesterday’s stock check.  The check took in fields with two small flocks of sheep, contentedly slumbering in the buttercup filled meadow or on the drier edge of a rushy pasture.  Elsewhere the Exmoor ponies were finally in the field by the viewing platform and were duly shut in there for a while.

Green veined white

The site is rarely dry and occasionally you find yourself in a rather more soggy area; it’s here that the cuckoo flower was still in full bloom and the rather old-looking specimens of the first brood of green-veined white butterflies were to be spotted. In the southern buttercup fields silver-ground carpet moths flitted up into the air as they were disturbed.  Their wings were more beige and brown than silver though the colouration does vary.  Elsewhere a couple of female scorpion flies were spotted though none of the more distinctive males were seen with their scorpion like tails.

Silver-ground carpet

Scorpion fly

Photos (c) Duncan Hutt