![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)
I spent the rest of the day back on my local patch, with the highpoint seeing 14 Commas and 14 Red Admirals. Quite why they should all appear on this particular afternoon (warm, mix of sun and cloud), I know not. Lots of subtle variety amongst the Commas... ...and amazing how relatively camouflaged a Red Admiral can be, either sitting on the path or sitting on a bramble. Quite the opposite when opening up and basking... A relative rarity here this year was a Large White - even more unusual to find it at ground level. Among the skippers, I found an unusually marked Essex, with the male sex-brand extended back across the forewing in a zigzag pattern. The butterfly continued to pose rather well... I decided to take a few shots of the carpet of flowers that currently flourished across a large part of my local patch. Maybe I had a premonition that the immediate future held lengthy spells of very hot dry weather that would turn this landscape first yellow then brown then grey. Certainly this was probably when it was at its floral peak. One sign that high summer was early was this fully ripe blackberry - 26th June is probably the earliest I have ever picked a handful of ripe berries (surprisingly I managed to do so again yesterday...
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)