Just for interest

As Bertha seems set to disrupt things for a couple of days, I thought I would share some more photos from Grafton. All were taken around 12.00 p.m. on August 4th, near the pond area. Forgive the quality of some of the images but my camera (and head) were poking through blackthorn bushes, at the time.
1. Female showing characteristic behaviour of crawling along twigs looking for egg-laying sites

2. Ovipositing on the shaded side of a twig junction.

3. Basking low down in the shrubbery, near blackthorn, in between spells of ovipositing.

4. Basking higher in bramble opposite the pond.

 Last year, the first egg-laying I observed at Grafton was on August 20th (stand to be corrected) which would make this year more than two weeks earlier!!