Bishop's Wood Butterflies

Before I took the sunset photos in my last post, I had been wandering around the Bishop's Wood nature reserve which overlooks Caswell Bay. My main quarry was butterflies, and the first one I came upon, perched on some vegetation bordering the car park, was this rather tatty Comma (it's the small, white, comma-like mark on the underwing, visible in the picture, which gives this butterfly its name):

I then climbed up the path through the woodland which leads to a grassy meadow with fine views over the bay below. I hoped, again, I might see a Silver-washed Fritillary which I've seen twice here before, but I had no luck today. The clifftop was full of flowering Hemp Agrimony and Common Knapweed, both good butterfly plants, and I saw plenty of Gatekeepers, Meadow Browns, Large and Small Whites, Common Blues, a handful of Small Coppers, as well as a couple of Small Tortoiseshells:

I've not had much luck photographing 'Cabbage' Whites (as well as them being so common that I probably tend to overlook them), so I was pleased to get this Small White in range of my lens:



I then saw what I at first thought was another white, but which, on closer inspection, turned out to be a female Brimstone, the first I've had the chance to photograph this year. Unfortunately, it was somewhat tatty, but that didn't stop me taking a few shots as it fed on Common Knapweed:

Finally, one of several Red Admirals which I saw feeding on Hemp Agrimony: