Stoke Camp and Black Rock - Sat 3 Jul

Term has ended so no more working Saturdays for two months, and Ellie and I took advantage of this and spent a day in the Mendips. We drove straight to the Butterfly Conservation Reserve of Stoke Camp, some five or so miles east of Cheddar, arriving mid-morning.
As we got out of the car, the first thing we saw was a juvenile Bullfinch feeding in the meadow. As we walked up over the hill to the reserve proper we could hear singing Skylarks and a Meadow Pipit. We entered the reserve area and spent an hour or so walking around and taking in the variety of butterflies that were flitting around, a pair of Linnets flew over as we were looking around.
Butterflies were pretty much everywhere once we got our eyes in and whilst at the reserve we saw a large number of Meadow Browns and several Ringlets:
And a fair number of Small Heaths:

At least one Small Skipper was seen and couple of well worn Large Skippers were still on the wing:


A new butterfly for Ellie was the Marbled White, and luckily we saw several of these too:
However, the higlight was a splendid Silver-washed Fritillary, a pretty special butterfly:

We also found a Scarlett Tiger moth:

After a picnic lunch we took a walk along Black Rock at the head of Cheddar Gorge where a male Brambling had been singing for the past couple of weeks. Whilst I have seen plenty of Bramblings, I could not recall seeing one in full breeding plumage, and I had certainly never heard one in song, so we thought we'd give it a go. We found the site in Long Wood where the bird had been seen, but other than a family party of Nuthatches and a couple of young Mistle Thrushes there was nothing on the bird front.
However, we did manage to see a couple of Commas and several Small Tortoiseshells. Also on the wing were a few Speckled Woods:

In a woodland clearing we picked up our second fritillary of the day, this time a Dark Green Fritillary, but it did not settle long enough to be photographed. Several "whites" were about but didn't settle long enough for us to properly identify. Finally, we saw two Brimstones:

It was now getting on a bit so we headed back to the car and drove on towards home. A brief stop at Ham Wall RSPB failed to produce the Little Bittern, and a stop at Collard Hill did not produce any Large Blues, but we did end the day with a Painted Lady!