Alittlebitoutoffocus

Alittlebitoutoffocus

Butterflies around Morfa Isaf, Nr Llangrannog, Ceredigion, Wales

UK readers will know that we had a mini-heatwave over a lot of England and Wales last week. (I’m not sure if Scotland also experienced record May temperatures, but…) It was forecast and, since it was Jude’s birthday, I decided to treat her to a short, 3 night break in a wonderful cottage, situated less then half a mile from a beautiful sandy cove. The only drawback in getting to the beach was the last 10 metres or so… And I mean that in height terms, as it required some very careful footwork and down-scrambling (or bum-sliding) to get onto the sand. (See pic 3).

On our first full day there, we had the beach to ourselves until around mid-day but, even then, only about a dozen people arrived. (This was particularly surprising given that it was half term week). Almost immediately we noticed a number of butterflies flying very quickly in a northerly direction. I was pretty sure that they would be Painted ladies (vanessa cardui) and this was confirmed on the walk back to the cottage, as I waited further up the hill to watch. I was amazed to see one flitting by every 10 seconds or so. All, seemingly, on a mission,

On day 2, we took a walk along the coast path to Penbryn beach, which was a little more crowded. We had a delicious lunch at the delightfully named cafe, just up the road, called Plwmp Tart (pronounced Ploomp Tart).

Back in the cottage garden, one of the bushes was covered with Painted ladies, all re-fuelling no doubt for the next leg of their long journey to who knows where… I counted 10 in pic 23 with one lonesome Red admiral (vanessa atalanta) on the left.

27 responses

  1. Pepper Avatar
    Pepper

    Lovely pics from both days. Nice that it was not crowded on day 1. Love the butterflies. 😁

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Many thanks. It was a lovely few days away. And, perhaps surprisingly, we enjoyed the slightly cooler (around 23 degree C) weather at the coast (compared to nearly 30 degrees at home!) I’m glad you enjoyed the butterflies. They would be flying in from north Africa and southern Europe. An incredible journey for such small and extremely light creatures.

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      1. Pepper Avatar
        Pepper

        Amazing that they can fly that distance. 😮

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        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
          Alittlebitoutoffocus

          Yes, they cover thousands of miles. I read that they only live for about 8 weeks, so they mate and lay eggs during their migration, leaving the next generation to continue onwards and repeat the cycle, before heading back south, again reproducing on the way. It’s incredible.

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        2. Pepper Avatar
          Pepper

          That is amazing! I had no idea that they only live about eight weeks.

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  2. blhphotoblog Avatar
    blhphotoblog

    It certainly is a ‘cardui year’.

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Yes, it was a constant stream of them. Higher up they all seemed to follow the same line, so I just watched in amazement, counting anywhere from 3 or 4 seconds to 15 before another whizzed by. On the beach it was less frequent, but then they would need to fly down and back up over the cliff, making the journey even harder!

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      1. blhphotoblog Avatar
        blhphotoblog

        Here they were all going east-west when they first started appearing. Before the weather broke the gardens were attracting dozens. Give them a good summer and by August they will have world domination!

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        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
          Alittlebitoutoffocus

          Gosh, it must be a good year for them then. Our buddleia got hit by frost and is struggling to flower, so we may not get too many in our garden, but we’ll see. (I think we had one yesterday).
          Btw we must have had a tawny owl nest somewhere very close, as we’ve seen 3 owlets in the trees at the bottom of the garden for the past week. I may well post some pics and a short video from the trailcam. But I’m hoping to capture some more images. 🤞🤞😀

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  3. Suzanne Avatar
    Suzanne

    Very good to see the butterflies as in previous years there have been a shortage of them particularly monarch ones. The white pesty ones not so much.

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      I think we just happened to be in the right place at the right time while they were migrating north. Soon they will be spread all over the UK and maybe even Scandinavia. But I believe there are some bumper years and this could be one.

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  4. restlessjo Avatar
    restlessjo

    What a lovely couple of days. It looks quite idyllic xx

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Yes, it was dry and warm (which isn’t always the case as you know). We may do something similar later in the year. We’ll just have to keep an eye on the forecast. 🤞🤞👍😊

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  5. Anita Avatar
    Anita

    A beautiful series, Mike. And a lovely birthday surprise for Jude❣All those butterflies are amazing, It must have been quite an experience to witness so many Painted Ladies at once.🦋 Your beach photos are wonderful too, imagine having a place like that almost to yourselves. Tomos looks as if he’s just come up from the water, does he enjoy a swim? Mine only like water when it’s in a bowl for drinking 🐕😉

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Tomos is like a small child on the beach… He walks into the water gradually until a wave comes along. If it’s very small he’ll jump over it but if it’s of any size at all, he’ll turn and run in. He has been known to swim, when the sea is calm and he’s followed my wife when she’s gone swimming, but normally, he just likes to paddle.
      Though he is obsessed with water near rock pools or in buckets or small streams. He likes us to flick the water into the air and he tries to catch it. He leaps (or springs!) so high that he sometimes does back-flips (and still lands on his paws). He had a young child in fits of laughter at the Penbryn beach where the stream came across the beach when I demonstrated his ‘trick’.

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      1. Anita Avatar
        Anita

        Tomos sounds like a character, a brave paddler until the waves get too ambitious, and then a quick retreat 😂💦 I can just picture that child laughing at his back‑flips. What a lovely dog you have. 🐕❣

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        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
          Alittlebitoutoffocus

          Tomos is a law unto himself! Only he knows what he’s going to do next! But, apart from being a little over-enthusiastic sometimes, he’s a complete charmer. 🐶👍😊

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  6. Wandering Dawgs Avatar
    Wandering Dawgs

    Beautiful scenery and butterflies!

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Many thanks for your comment. It was a lovely break, enhanced by the sun, sea and butterflies. 👍👍😊

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  7. Laura Newhampshire Avatar
    Laura Newhampshire

    You and I have both bemoaned about how WP doesn’t bother to send us the notifications of each other’s post consistently. WP declined to inform me of this post, and I only saw it because it did send me notice of your baby bird post! :grumble: ANYway…

    I’m curious. You alluded to the scramble down to the beach. Just how do you get from photo #2 to #3 (the beach). In No. CA, where I lived for a few decades, cliff scrambling was how you got to the beaches (vs the flat, open beaches of So. CA). But there were usually some kind of steps built into the cliff. The one you showed looks like… death defying. But it also looks like the little hidden beaches that I so loved in CA.

    Tomos looks adorable, as usual.

    David mentioned it being “hot” in Edinburgh. I looked up the current temp and it was 23 C… which is room temperature! I guess it was sunny, so all the translucent folk were melting. Tomorrow in New Hampshire we are going to be about 34 C (unusual for us) and I will be turning on the A.C. But at 23??? Y’all have different definitions of “heat wave.” 🙂

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      I can see your confusion… To the left of the path in photo 2, there was a relatively easy step or two down to another sloping path. If you look at the V in the skyline of pic 3, that’s where the path down starts and you can see the sloping path. After that, it doubled (or zagged) back to the right of the top of the rocks. From there it was a case of picking the way you preferred down and being careful not to slip. Unless, like Jude, you decided to slip naturally down the last section on your bottom. (Just relooked at the pic and. curiously enough, that’s the section directly above the word down in the caption, with a ‘wall’ to the right! You can see it’s a bit smoother and lighter than the rest of the rock).
      The temperature at home was due to be 26 to 30 degrees (I forget exactly) so it was good to go somewhere with a more ambient temperature. 👍👍😊

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      1. Laura Newhampshire Avatar
        Laura Newhampshire

        OK, I can see the path down now (thanks for the hint of the word “down” on the photo caption). That raises the question, “How the eff do you get back up?!” 🙂

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        1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
          Alittlebitoutoffocus

          You’re full of good questions…! I actually went back up to get some lunch and came back down again, so I scaled it twice. The first time I shimmied across to the crack to the left and came down, maybe to the left of that, somehow. After getting down, I noticed what should have been a reasonably easy climb back up to the left and I saw some people come down that way, but when I tried it, it didn’t look that easy to climb down. (I’ve never been good at down climbing, if I’ve not gone up that way!) I think in both cases I went up towards the right, though the 2nd time, I had to haul Tomos up onto the next level, which wasn’t easy. After that he, and I, were OK. Jude came up more or less the same way I think. I didn’t see how Tomos got down, but he was on the beach in a flash. I presume he got so far and jumped!

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  8. Jim Earlam Avatar
    Jim Earlam

    Great pictures Mike, the Welsh coast on a sunny day is hard to beat 😁

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Thanks Jim. Yes, the beaches around the coast are generally very sandy, so ideal for the dog and going for a dip.

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  9. Mélodie Avatar
    Mélodie

    Beautiful photos. The scrambling down to access the beach looks fun. I like the photo of the little gate.

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    1. Alittlebitoutoffocus Avatar
      Alittlebitoutoffocus

      Thanks Mélodie. The cottage was at the (dead) end of a private lane and had a lovely, rustic garden, so the gate really fitted nicely.

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