The Common Blue on the Litter Pick

Been doing a bit of what I suppose counts both as work and community service today, organising a litter pick on public land adjoining work that a large number of our lazier co-workers think is a landfill for throwing away old cans of Red Bull and Relentless, and McDonalds coffee cups.

What is actually is, is a really good brownfield wildlife habitat, full of burnet moths, cinnabars, and the usual grassland butterflies. Kestrels fly over head, looking for rabbits although preferably fresher than the stinking maggot infested dead bunny I came across today and nearly trod in. Surprised the buzzards haven't taken it.

While fag packets and tin cans was the main harvest, soke odder things turned up as well. A car tire, a pair of socks on the A1 bridge. Several separate piles of stripy drinking straws.

We actually had proper litter picking sticks - very difficult to use of left handed FFS it's 2017 - and plastic bags that were impossible to keep open whenever the breeze got up, which meant I kept having to pick up packets of Polish Marlboro about three times before I could get them into the bags.

Luckily my colleagues were far more organised, and far less crap.We filled about 8 sacks up with stuff, and even I have to say the place looks far better. Why folk felt the need to take their socks off and leave them on a pedestrian bridge is beyond me however, although I appreciate the thoughtfulness of someone who decided to put their cans of Monster in a bin bag before throwing them down a bank.

Amid all the detritus, I spotted this smart male common blue, which eventually posed for a single photograph after having been very skittish before that. Perhaps it was scared of the enormous pincers my litter picker had!

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 11.08.18