woundwort

a strange little homunculus caught appearing in some hedge woundwort. It reminds me of the fairy photographs that entranced Arthur Conan Doyle.

tamar valley

the upper part of the Tamar estuary, St Dominic to the right

field rose

wild roses growing in the hedgerows. They have no scent unlike the dog rose (Spot wants to know who is responsible for giving the rose a bad name). The distinctive feature of the field rose is the tall columnar styles in the middle of the flower.

skippers

the large skipper, a primitive moth like butterfly, sitting on some seed pods of yellow rattle. There were marsh and butterfly orchids (use the orchid label to see earlier pictures of these orchids in the blog) in the meadows today although they are coming to the end of their flowering season and were looking a bit tattered. Butterfly orchids have the most delicate, slightly sweet vanilla scent.

an enormous foxglove

this is a very odd triple stalked foxglove. The stalks are fused together like Siamese twins, and the flower spike is huge and crowded with flowers (a normal foxglove can be seen to the right).

not stirring up a hornet's nest

the rarest largest and most docile of our native social wasps. This is a queen hornet building her nest out of masticated wood, under the eaves of an out house near Kelly Bray. She will lay her eggs in the comb (the structure appearing in the centre). She will feed them on chewed up flies until they emerge later in June at which point we may need to stand a bit further a

way.