Aldeburgh ~ UK Butterflies ~ Nikon D80

Fortnightly Field Notes From Nature

Returning to Aldeburgh ~ Shingle Desert to Coastal Garden

There is a unique magic in returning to a place you haven’t seen in over two decades. Your mind holds onto a specific snapshot, frozen in time. For more than twenty years, my mental picture of the Aldeburgh coastline was simple, stark, and beautifully bleak: a vast, sweeping desert of grey shingle stretching out as far as the eye could see, meeting the moody North Sea.

This week, I finally went back. And the coast I remembered had completely changed.

Where my memory expected nothing but barren pebbles, I was greeted instead by an absolute explosion of life. The stark, stony landscape has transformed into a vibrant, thriving coastal garden. Walking along the beach now feels like discovering a secret world where nature has stubbornly, beautifully claimed the upper hand.

The sheer variety of plant life thriving directly out of the loose stones is breath-taking. I stumbled upon massive, waxy mounds of Sea Kale, its thick cabbage-like leaves looking wonderfully surreal against the beach. Hugging the ground right beside them, the intense, electric-blue spikes of Viper’s Bugloss formed dense, low clusters, and the soft, silvery-grey carpets of Sea Wormwood lined the upper banks. Sadly, Rosa rugosa has quite a footing there too. It is a non-native rose from Asia with an aggressive root system, making it near impossible to remove without damaging the fragile coastal soil structure that forms beneath the pebbles.

What used to feel like a harsh, empty barrier between the town and the sea now feels alive, dynamic, and full of texture. Seeing this incredible change reminded me of how resilient nature truly is. If you haven't been to Aldeburgh in a while, go back. The shingle is still there, but the garden it has become is something you have to see to believe.

On another note - it was a lovely surprise to find a gull chick just outside our hotel room window. The dawn chorus was a little different by the coast from what we were used to, but thankfully this little chick slept through most of the night!

No Mow Invites New Butterflies at Frowning Sparrow Wood

We often think wildlife needs bright flowers, but at Frowning Sparrow Wood, the magic is in the uncut grasses. Leaving them wild has attracted some wonderful new butterfly visitors. By simply stepping away from the mower, the wood has welcomed a whole new generation of wings.

The velvety brown Ringlet butterflies drift over the blades, dropping their eggs into lush patches of False Brome. Darting alongside them are fiery orange Large Skippers. They love basking on sunny stems of native grasses like Cock's Foot, which is their absolute favourite choice for egg-laying. These grasses are a lifeline—their caterpillars live safely stitched inside the rolled-up blades and can over-winter safely knowing no mower will destroy them.

That being said, I do need more nectar plants and hope that the ragwort and thistles, both very valuable to adult butterflies, can be a good start as they slowly take over patches of nettles.

Grab-and-Go ~ Keeping a Camera by the Coat Rail

I often walk the woods just to check the fence line. Too many times, I have spotted something incredible to document but didn't have a camera with me. Other times, I’ve been photographing something specific, but didn't have the ideal lens for the unexpected encounter, like capturing a Large Skipper with a 50mm lens simply because that was all I had to hand.

To solve this, I have set up a "non-precious" everyday walk-about kit: a Nikon D80 paired with a 28-200mm AF-D lens. Having a camera fitted with a general-purpose lens with me at all times is incredibly helpful. This is a kit I do not need to baby or overthink. It lives right by the door, ready to be grabbed off the coat rail at a second’s notice. No more missed moments, and always ready for whatever unexpected wildlife or plant life pops up.

So far, the camera is a bit of a a love / hate relationship! It probably renders images the closest to film of any digital camera I have used, which I adore. However, the greens can be very unnatural, and that will take some experimenting in post-processing to get right. Once I have that pinned down, this will be a faithful companion on my walkabouts.

Behind the Lens

Slow Shutter - Wild Land

Until next time...