It's more than a week since I ventured to the Varteg for my annual visit to the reclaimed landscape of The Balance. A makeshift hand written sign attached to a field gate advised dog owners to keep them on leads due to the presence of cattle. And sure enough positioned inconveniently just the other side of a footpath stile were a dozen or so grunting, tail swishing, pat forming cattle taking advantage of the shade provided by a number of mature trees. A quick detour took me beyond the cattle and into an open vista of gorse, bracken and acid grassland, here marbled whites, ringlets and grayling butterflies were in abundance. I could feel the sun burning the back of my neck as I fumbled to photograph one of these busy insects - unsuccessfully!
The land form here is characteristic of a 1970's land reclamation scheme. Gone is the randomness of industrial abuse and in is a smooth, ironed out, sheep grazed blandness where you need to work to find nature. However, through the heat and the dust of a sheep track and just like a head scarf draped over the shoulder of a Bedouin tradesman came a green verdant river of vegetation adorned with white nodding heads of scattered common cotton grass. With purpose in my stride I quickly arrived at a substantial spring flush still with running water. Here I was surprised to set a single snipe to flight. Dropping to my knees for a closer examination of the herbage I discovered a mass of ivy-leaved bellflower, bog pimpernel and round-leaved sundew.
Following the running water to an area of open water, that was clearly characterised by odonata I began to search for these colourful insects. Keeled skimmer were the most numerous, but thrown in for good measure were a golden-ringed dragonfly and a broad bodied chaser. Scarce blue-tailed damselfly move slowly through the stream side herbage. A male yellowhammer sang from the top of a nearby gorse bush.
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