Alners Gorse - Sun 3 Jul

After a fairly relaxing start to the day I headed off to the other side of Sherborne and arrived at the Butterfly Conservation Reserve of Alner's Gorse at about 11.00am. It was a lovely hot and sunny morning and as a result there were butterflies everywhere. As I walked down to the track and on to the reserve proper I noticed a lot of Ringlets and Meadow Browns and flyng around in the shorter grass a number of Small Skippers and one or two Common Blues.
I then walked over to the hedge that runs along the western side of the reserve where there were half a dozen or so people watchign butterflies. After a chat I soon got on to the two species that they were watching, White-letter Hairstreak and Purple Hairstreak:

Whilst both were fairly high up in the trees they were occasionally coming a bit lower down and afforded some brilliant views. Both these hairstreaks were new butterfly species for me.
I then wandered to the northern fringe and around the clearings in the larger trees there were several Silver-washed Fritillaries. Walking back to the car I also saw several Marbled Whites and with Peacock, Red Admiral, Green-veined White and Large Skipper added to list it meant for a cracking couple of hours watching butterflies.