Wood White butterfly sighting at Salcey Forest - 8/6/13

Wood White at Salcey Forest 

Saturday June  8th 2013

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/salceyforest

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pdf/Salceyguide08.pdf/$file/Salceyguide08.pdf

We wanted to revisit Salcey Forest to try to get better pictures of  the Wood White butterfly.

Last year we saw plenty but they were all in flight, so we only had a picture of a white blob. This would not convince anybody but us that we saw had seen this dainty woodland inhabitant in Salcey Forest in 2012.

We walked past the fallen Patmore Oak

where there is a delicate mild steel sculpture of Dancing Figures by  Linda Johns: I love this so much, it is so subtle, it is almost not there ( hard to photograph and do it justice)

 and reached this place where  you could look in two directions at once. Nev went looking up the path behind the seated me, while I slumped and drank water.

We went off the the left and although we were bitter at the weather forecast, which had suggested glorious sunshine, the dullness probably meant that the wood whites perched so this time we got good photographs...

The butterfly was was smaller than I remembered.

 For the first time we also photographed a male Orange-Tip with its wings open - it is far from perfect but it is the best picture we have ever taken (I say we, I got bored and went to photograph paths instead, and Nev took it ).

We somehow managed to follow the bike/bridle route and walked all around the perimeter of the wood  it was a long, long walk...
but at the end of it we got to walk on this!

I was going on about  how all my fear of heights was gone now until we got to one of those staircases that you can see through...

so  I could not lean over the top and take this though Nev could.