A different day a different species. Counting again but this time orchids. All this counting what is the point ? Well it gives us measurable information about the changes of these key plants and animals. 
So I headed out to the west part of Flanders with local orchid counter Roy Sexton to find the patch of greeny white lesser butterfly orchid and pinky fragrant orchids. The lesser butterfly orchids (or LBOs) are a flower that is declining fast across the UK and so a lot of effort is being put into monitoring the colonies left to find out more about them. 2 years ago we had a record year of about 40 flower spikes, last year only 10 or so. So we were unsure what we would find. First to appear the fragrant orchids and i set off to count them. The fragrant orchid gets its name from, yes you guessed it, its nice smell, some of the orchids smell at lot worse, like the early purple orchid that smell of tom cat wee, it is lucky it didn't get its name from its smell. 79 fragrant flowering spikes, excellent. Meanwhile Roy was counting the LBOs - 87 spikes !! A Flanders record. Orchids are funny things and it can be difficult to tell why they suddenly do so well but one reason maybe the good grazing levels where the sheep and cattle are removed to allow the orchids to flower.
Other gems while orchid searching include roe deer bouncing away after dozing in the sun, bright orange small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies bombing past and a small meadow pipits nest that had an unusually large paler brown egg amongst the dark brown pipit eggs. I suspect that it might be a cuckoo egg but I will have to revisit and see if a week or twos time.
So I headed out to the west part of Flanders with local orchid counter Roy Sexton to find the patch of greeny white lesser butterfly orchid and pinky fragrant orchids. The lesser butterfly orchids (or LBOs) are a flower that is declining fast across the UK and so a lot of effort is being put into monitoring the colonies left to find out more about them. 2 years ago we had a record year of about 40 flower spikes, last year only 10 or so. So we were unsure what we would find. First to appear the fragrant orchids and i set off to count them. The fragrant orchid gets its name from, yes you guessed it, its nice smell, some of the orchids smell at lot worse, like the early purple orchid that smell of tom cat wee, it is lucky it didn't get its name from its smell. 79 fragrant flowering spikes, excellent. Meanwhile Roy was counting the LBOs - 87 spikes !! A Flanders record. Orchids are funny things and it can be difficult to tell why they suddenly do so well but one reason maybe the good grazing levels where the sheep and cattle are removed to allow the orchids to flower.Other gems while orchid searching include roe deer bouncing away after dozing in the sun, bright orange small pearl-bordered fritillary butterflies bombing past and a small meadow pipits nest that had an unusually large paler brown egg amongst the dark brown pipit eggs. I suspect that it might be a cuckoo egg but I will have to revisit and see if a week or twos time.
