The track that runs along the edge of the Devon estuary at Cambus is always a fruitful place for late summer flowers, and on my most recent visit, a good selection shone out from the more open and sunnier margins.
One of the most prominent was tansy, which is a tall plant that features distinctive yellow, pincushion-like flowers.
The plant’s dark green leaves are strongly aromatic and French cooks in the past used them as a herb-like flavouring ingredient in omelettes and other egg dishes.
The flowers are very attractive to hoverflies, and I noticed several of these colourful insects at Cambus, lured by the nectar riches lying within the blooms.
Also present in good abundance were thick purple flushes of knapweed, which resembles a thistle but doesn’t have the prickles and features elongated leaves.
Its purple flower-heads are comprised of many tiny florets, which are also hugely attractive to pollinating insects, most especially butterflies, including large-white butterflies, which are common at Cambus.
On one knapweed flowerhead by the track edge, a red-tailed bumblebee probed each floret eagerly.
They are attractive bumblebees, generally not as common as some other types.
The female red-tailed bumblebee is a very large, black bumblebee with a big red tail-end.
Males are smaller and as well as the red tail some males have two yellow bands on the thorax and one at the base of the abdomen – however, usually this is very faint.
Further along the track, a butterfly zipped ahead of me on fast-beating wings.
It was a speckled wood and it is only in the last few years that this species has started to appear in Clackmannanshire.
Around 50 years ago the speckled wood was confined in small numbers on the west coast and around Inverness.
Since then, the population has expanded rapidly and now it is found widely in eastern and central Scotland, including the Wee County.
Indeed, a butterfly count at the Scottish Wildlife Trust’s Cambus Pools reserve recently found the speckled wood to be the commonest butterfly present, with 22 counted.
This population explosion has been put down to global warming, and some other butterfly species also appear to be benefiting from climate change, including ringlet, orange-tip and holly blue.
Sadly, they are the exceptions, and according to the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme, last year was one of the worst on record for butterflies, with more than half of butterfly species in decline.
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