Autumn Lady's Tresses, Anchor Bottom

Following three days of really enjoyable birding I managed to find enough energy to get out and about to Anchor Bottom. I have been trying to get there to record the Autumn  Lady's Tresses and feared that I would be too late. Not quite, although some of the blooms had gone over, there remained masses just coming into full flower. On the northern - south facing, slope of Anchor Bottom there are hundreds, probably thousands, of specimens between the entrance at Dacre Gardens and the old fence line.

 



Some are tall......

.....and some are small.

On our recent travels Martin and I had come across a Robin's Pincushion. However, today I found a really magnificent set of specimens, well worth photographing. The rose bedeguar gall, Robin's Pincushion gall or moss gall develops as a chemically induced distortion of an unopened leaf axillary or terminal bud, usually on the Field Rose or Dog Rose, caused by the parthenogenetic hymenopteran Gall Wasp, Diplolepis rosae.

 

 

A ginormous cluster!!

 

Butterflies are plentiful, particularly blues, but there are still Clouded Yellows to be found, though not willing to settle. Most specimens are now well past their "sell by" date.

Now that's what I call "well worn"

The thistle heads that were the source of food for the butterflies are now providing seed to ever increasing numbers of Goldfinches.

The season of mellow fruitfulness is upon us and the first signs of the "fungus fest" are showing, nothing like a good cowpat to provide the sustenance. This is possibly a Snowy Inkcap, Coprinopsis nivea  which prefers the weathered dung of herbivores.

And finally.............Eyebright, Euphrasia officinalis