I visited the reserve this morning, a warm and calm day, to look for butterflies and especially to check out some elms by the Sustrans route and in the wood for white-letter hairstreaks. No joy along the Sustrans route but I did see many ringlets, the commonest butterfly, and meadow browns, gatekeepers, large skippers, small and green-veined whites, a couple of commas and single peacock and small tortoiseshell. In the wood I checked an area I'd found previously that looked good for white-letter hairstreaks - a patch of brambles in a sunny glade with an elm and some elm saplings around it. After about five minutes, a small butterfly caught my attention as it flew around the top of an elm sapling and then landed - a white-letter hairstreak. Better was to come as another WLH landed on a bramble a couple of metres in front of me giving excellent binocular views as it walked over leaves and flowers, showing its dark underwing with a white scribble of a sideways 'W'. At least one other WLH was seen in flight over the brambles so at least three seen. I saw them between 11 - 11.20 am, and late morning is often a good time to look for this butterfly.
On the eastern public footpath there was an attractive display of summer flowers - the white of wild carrot, yellows of lady's bedstraw and bird's foot-trefoil, and purple of common knapweed. There were many meadow browns and several small skippers.
The weather was good for damsel and dragonflies and I saw blue-tailed and common blue damselflies, banded demoiselle, black-tailed skimmer, common darter, brown hawker and emperor.