Spot the winner
Chocolate and cream can be tempting for many of us. See them fluttering up from a path through a summer woodland, and you might feel you’re in a waking dream.
Or you could forget the food links and think about butterflies: the speckled wood, to be precise. This medium-sized butterfly with the tasty-looking colour scheme has a wingspan about the width of a smartphone. Females are slightly larger than males, and spend much of their time in the tree canopy.
Males can often be seen at or near the ground, where more than half of them defend a space they use as a vantage point to look out for near-flying
females. That space is often in a sunspot (weather permitting).
Any male coming into the sunspot is
challenged in a contest of upward-spiralling flight. Speckled wood males that are warmer (which may often apply to the sunspot’s resident) are better able to sustain their flight and win the contest. By winning, the male can stay in his chosen spot and hope to boost his mating chances. Hot stuff, this chocolate and cream.
Web tip:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/0003347278900131
Some other things to look for in summer:
Pink-flowered thrift on coastal rocks; many kinds of hoverflies in gardens; swallows on the wing; pine cones flowering; roe deer barking in woods
www.snh.gov.uk
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Summer
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