{"id":3869,"date":"2020-07-05T09:03:59","date_gmt":"2020-07-05T09:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/?p=3869"},"modified":"2020-07-05T09:04:20","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T09:04:20","slug":"raindrops-and-ringlets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/?p=3869","title":{"rendered":"Raindrops and Ringlets"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not deterred by the unsettled weather at the end of June, I planned to start the new month with a walk using footpaths around the village of West Bretton avoiding the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which remained closed due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.\u00a0 Come the morning of 1st<\/sup> July with a forecast of grey skies and intermittent drizzle I was beginning to have second thoughts.\u00a0 However, the clouds started to thin, albeit slightly, allowing some weak sunshine to filter through coaxing the temperature to slowly lift.\u00a0 So I was soon more hopeful of seeing some wildlife and set off.\u00a0 The conditions underfoot, indeed almost up to waist level in the tall grass, was very wet.\u00a0 Nevertheless, in places there were clouds of ringlet butterflies fluttering carefully amongst a mass of raindrops delicately balanced on narrow leaves shimmering like precious gems.\u00a0 An ephemeral gift of heavy overnight rain.<\/p>\n

\"ringlet\"<\/a>

ringlet butterfly<\/p><\/div>\n

Other butterflies included a small number of meadow brown, two small tortoiseshell, a single small skipper and good numbers of the caterpillars of peacock butterfly feeding on nettle.\u00a0 During a brief shower towards the end of the walk I shared the shelter of a tall hedgerow with a bumble bee attracted to the flower and pollen of a field rose (Rosa arvensis). So even on this occasion rain didn\u2019t stop play.<\/p>\n

\"field<\/a>

field rose and bumble bee<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not deterred by the unsettled weather at the end of June, I planned to start the new month with a walk using footpaths around the village of West Bretton avoiding the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, which remained closed due to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[71,17],"tags":[31,450,57,451],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3872,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3869\/revisions\/3872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wakefieldnaturalists.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}