Goldenacre Park, Small Skippers

Over at Goldenacre Park, Bramhope, Leeds we headed towards the demonstration garden where we found eight Small Skippers (Thymelicus sylvestris) settled on Lavender. They went almost unnoticed until a slight movement from one of them caught my eye. The park is a riot of colour at the moment, the flower borders are brimming with bold summer colour & is worth a visit if you're nearby.


With this pic I tried to capture three Small Skippers in close proximity to each other. But from this angle the light was actually really low and I admit I had to do a little bit of work to lighten the pic. I took a number of pics but this was the only one that was usable.



A male Small Skipper. The male can be distinguished from the female by the black mark (sex brand) on the forewings which is a curved line of specialised scent scales. You can see it clearly here on the left wing.
I think this is eryngium yuccifolium. I attended the Wellcome Collection exhibition From Atoms to Patterns in 2008 & the morphology of this plant reminded of the atomic structure designs that that featured in this exhibition. From nature to science to design & back to nature!