Flutterbys

I've heard it said that the Celts believed that butterflies were the spirits of their ancestors returned to visit the world of the living. If so, they'd returned in force today and where better to return to than the ancient landscape of Cranborne Chase, a landscaped shaped and left indelibly marked by the activities of man for over 6000 years. The area is renowned for prehistoric archaeology and its butterflies, and rightly so, the air was thick with them, I'll say hundreds although really it must have been thousands but that sounds like I'm exaggerating, nearly every blade of tall grass or grassland flower was topped by a pausing flier, only for a short while though, as the slightest disturbance would send them skittishly aloft. Two types of butterfly dominated the grasslands today: the big and bold Marbled White (Melanargia galathea) and the smaller skittish Large Skipper (Ochlodes venatus) which in reality aren't that large at all. Both butterflies were beautiful and elegant, both filled me with childish joy and wonder as the air filled with them as we passed.