Winged surprise lifts spirits on a cold morning

Slufters Inclosure, New Forest This hardy specimen of butterfly has found an ideal basking site among still damp grasses in a bed of fern On a bright, cold morning, sandwiched between days of rain and nights of frost, we explore Slufters Inclosure, an area first separated in 1862, when it was planted with Scots pine. It is 6C (43F) when we leave home but the southerly slopes here are harvesting the heat of the sun, and the temperature gradually lifts (just) into double figures. It’s enough