Marsh Fritillaries near Mullion Cove, Lizard.

  On Sunday John and I decided to visit the cliffs near Mullion Cove, on the Lizard to look for the Marsh Fritillaries that are known to be in the area.

  It was a beautiful day for a walk along the cliffs and there were lots of flowers to look at along the way. ( There will be another post showing the flowers that we saw.) 

  There were many Common Blue butterflies together with Wall Brown's and a Small Copper. We eventually found one Marsh Fritillary resting on a Thrift flower head. Clouds hid the sun for a while, so as the temperature had dropped slightly the butterfly was happy sitting still on the flower. Perfect for a photo!

  As we walked a little further along the cliff, the sun came out and the temperature started to rise and all of a sudden we were surrounding by many Marsh Fritillaries flying over the cliffs. There must have been over forty individuals. The next two photographs are of male butterflies.

  I then found a pair of mating fritillaries slightly hidden in the grass. We noticed that the female was an aberrant form. These are very rare in small colonies like this one.

  The male also had slightly different markings and was quite a dark in appearance. The next photograph shows a close up of his head - this is one of things that I like about macro photography is that you see things that you would not normally see, for example the dark markings on his eyes and the fur on his face. 

  The final photograph shows a close up on the underneath of the hindwing and with the macro lens it is possible to see the individual scales that make up the pattern on the butterfly's wing.