13th May, 2016. The meadow is awake...

It’s been 6 long wintery months since I last walked down the track to Volehouse. Rosie recognises it instantly and bounds off ahead, reaching the 5 bar gate at the end before returning at a more leisurely pace, nose brushing the grass and twitching furiously to take in the mass of new scents. They say that Spaniels smell in 3D and watching Rosie selecting and discarding the invisible trails before settling on the most interesting, I think they’re probably right.

The track that leads to Volehouse south side

The top meadow, south side. Cattle graze here during late summer and autumn. 

The buttercups in the top meadow are in full flower, and as I walk down into the next field, a male Orange Tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) is flying along the hedgerow. Only the males display the orange on the forewings. The females are plain white with grey-black tipped forewings. Both have the distinctive green-looking mottling on the underside of the hindwing, though, so they’re easily distinguished from the superficially similar Green veined white (Pieris napi) and Small white (Pieris rapae).

The mottled underside of the Orange tip identifies it even if there's no orange! 

This particular one is in a hurry, alighting briefly on the cuckoo flowers (Cardamine pratensis, sometimes known as lady's smock) that are closest to the hedge, pausing for a couple of seconds and then moving on. 

Male Orange Tip on Cuckoo flower

He's hunting for a mate, and further down the field, I come across the object of his affections flying in a far more relaxed manner from flower to flower.

The female Orange Tip has no hint of orange anywhere

Spring has woken the meadow from its long winter's sleep and now things will start changing almost daily. 

It's nice to be back.