The season seems to be very late because the 2 Lady orchids have only really just started flowering fully and just 1 hybrid has broken bud. There are plenty more hybrids in tight bud, which might open this weekend but I would advise people to delay their visits until next weekend. No Monkey orchids are even showing buds yet and it will probably be 2 weeks before they are open in any numbers.

The good news is that the washed-out April has watered the plants in nicely and they are going to flower in good numbers. But the flip-side of that is that we are likely to loose a fair few spikes to the slugs and snails – I already spotted 1 hybrid with a broken spike (see below).

Suffice it to say, that we have been finding plenty of plants and it looks as though this year should be as good as last year. But the flowering season is likely to be later than in the previous 2 years. There will be plenty of Monkey orchids flowering (we have seen the pikes forming) and the same goes for the hybrids. Two Lady orchids have sent up spikes and one of them has opened the first buds, but the plants are quite short this year.

If the weather warms a little then growth will  progress faster but at the moment it looks like the second week in May is the earliest that visitors should come to the site to see the orchids. At the moment the lower gate is locked to prevent access and there are no guide tapes but we hope to open it up this coming weekend.

Insects were on the wing in good numbers, sunning and nectaring on dandilions and ground ivy. These included: Dingy Skipper (20+), Grizzled Skipper (1 very fresh), Small Heath (1), Peacock (1), Orange Tip (2), Osmia bicolor (a bee that nests in old snail shells), Gymnocheta viridis and lots of Bombylius major (bee fly).

Pasque Flowers were doing very well with about 10 clumps in flower.

Pasque flower

Gymnocheta viridis

The wardens will be making the most of it too because this year’s Monkey Orchids are just starting to poke up through the grass and this can mean only 1 thing … the orchid mapping season has started!! We need to get all of the plants checked and mapped in and (hopefully) tagged before they start to flower and the visitors start arriving. The next few weeks should be really busy but it is always a fun time when we get the first chance to estimate how good a year it will be.

There is one thing for sure though, if we don’t get some rain soon we are very likely to see another drought, like we had last year, and which caused most of the flowering plants to abort. I love the sunny weather but I’m also praying for rain … and sometime soonish!

The rest of the workparty was relatively uneventful but we managed to trudge through the snow to the far side of slope 4 and finished off the scrub management along that lower fence – a job that we have been slowly chipping away at all winter. The improvement to the cleared area is really obvious and I hope that the light will get in and help the grassland flowers to flourish. We intend to allow some of the scrub line to come back gradually over time, to provide more shelter for invertebrates but in the meantime they should be fine.

The early emergence of mayflies has ended (Ephemera vulgata and danica) but now the real rarities are on the wing – Ephemera lineata.

Bee orchids are also just coming into flower, along with Bastard Toadflax, Yellow-wort, Clustered Bellflower and Thyme.

Found this really lovely giant aphid* today … it’s about 1cm long. There were also a few Ephemera vulgata & lineata plus all of the usual butterflies; a few demoiselles and perhaps 1 Club-tailed dragonfly.

(* Tony Irwin suggests that it might be Cinara piceae)