An Esssex skipper butterfly feeding on flowers in the same thistle patch as the small skippers featured earlier today.
The two species can be told apart by the colour of the ends of their antennae. Essex skippers have a black tip, small skippers a duller red/brown one.
Essex skippers were once limited pretty much to East Anglia as the extreme of their European distribution. In more recent years they have been spreading through the English south and midlands, and into Wales.
