Skippers and kings in the chalk rubble reserve

Bloody Oaks Quarry, Rutland Sitting on a salad burnet flower head is a dingy skipper, then I find the royal blue chalk milkwort

This tiny nature reserve, a long thin quarry, is no bigger than two football pitches, yet it is an essential home for many types of plants and animals. The colourful name apparently dates back to the Wars of the Roses and a 1470 battle between the Yorkist King Edward IV and the Lancastrian Welles family. The king opened by beheading Lord Welles, then launched a volley of new-fangled cannon fire, causing a rout, and concluded by slaughtering captured Lancastrians in the nearby wood.