Butterflies on Corstorphine Hill

 I'm doing a butterfly survey most weeks at the moment. Today I was on Corstorphine Hill, starting in the Walled Garden and walking through the meadow areas of the hill. The first thing that I saw was a Common Buzzard flying into the trees with a kill (it looked like a rat or a baby rabbit, I was too far away to see), then I heard the clamour of young in the nest as they were fed! Buzzards are common birds, but I've never seen them bringing a kill to the nest before. The photo below shows the trees where the nest is sited, but the buzzards can't be seen in the photo.

Common Spotted Orchids are in bloom at the moment, there are more this year on the hill than I've ever seen before.

The Common Line (Linden) trees are still in bloom, slightly fading now but still smelling wonderful

Some of the leaves were host to galls (probably caused by the gall mite Eriophytes tiliae)

I saw a reasonable number of butterflies, particularly Small Skippers

and Meadow Browns 

and a couple of Ringlets

I also saw this parasitic wasp, with a very long ovipositor for injecting its eggs into whatever insect it parasitisizes - click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the ovipositor