This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is ‘Summer Vibes’. This coincides beautifully for me as yesterday, my daughter and I had a lovely and quite exciting walk in nearby sand dunes at Ynyslas. As you can imagine, for me, summer is all about the small things, like insects and flower and I was not disappointed!
I saw some things I’ve never actually seen before, like this flower – the Common Centaury – there were loads of them bringing lovely splashes of pink amid the dunes.
There were also these tiny pink flowers dotted about which I think are Common Restharrow.
One of the reasons we were going to the dunes was because my daughter went on a university field trip there a while back and the lecturers mentioned that in July/August there would be orchids to see. It is on a part of the sand dunes I hadn’t actually investigated before so I hadn’t seen them.
I was excited to see what we could find, and was very happy to find lots and lots of beautiful Marsh Helleborines (another flower I’ve not seen before). From a distance we weren’t sure if they were the orchids we were looking for but as we got closer (and closer) we could see all their lovely little details. Such pretty little flowers!
It wasn’t just me and my daughter enjoying them, there were plenty of insects too, like this Soldier Beetle.
There were lots of butterflies around on the dunes too. Mostly Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns as well as tiny Skippers that you could easily mistake for a moth.
We heard a lot of chirping from the Grasshoppers (a sound that really says ‘summer’ to me), and managed to spot one or two.
As we were talking about the grasshoppers I said “I’ve still never seen a cricket, I wish I could see one”… and then I saw movement! It hopped like a grasshopper but I spotted its long antennae, and yes, it was a cricket!! Not sure how I’ve made it nearly to 50 without seeing a cricket before, but yesterday it was my first time. It’s not the best photo, with it facing away from me, but I was glad to grab a picture of it before it hopped away.
There was another exciting moment in the dunes when my daughter saw an Adder! It was right behind my foot as I walked by some long grass! It was a very exciting thing to see, although somewhat alarming as if I had stepped on it, it might well have bitten me! Sadly it disappeared into the grass so I didn’t see it myself.
As we emerged from the dunes towards the beach, we had a lovely 360 view which I captured on my phone as I had my macro lens on the camera
And then onto the beach. The tide was far out but there were many beach pools where I enjoyed the reflections and shadows in the gently rippling water.
There were tiny little fish swimming in the pools
And teeny tiny prawns if you looked really closely! They are amazingly well camouflaged, looking exactly like sand, and very hard to get a good shot of!
We even saw this large flatfish, just chilling in the pools waiting for the tide to come back in!
And a jellyfish too…
And as we strolled along the sand we saw in the distance a load of sea birds following a fishing boat. You might need to click on this one to see it bigger on Flickr.
All in all a beautiful visit to Ynyslas. By the end of our walk we were hot, sweaty, in pain and tired out, but it was worth it 🙂 We are very lucky to have such beautiful places on our doorstep.
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