confrontation

a young hawk (not sure which type) and a magpie confront each other in the garden today.

take me to your leader

there may not be many butterflies around but there are a lot of dragonflies zipping up and down. I think this is a southern hawker although it isn't exactly the same (see link to British Dragonfly society)

the hair of the cat

This unusual looking caterpillar is probably a larva of some sort of sawfly (see link to previous Spotblog page). Apparently the word caterpillar is derived from an old french word chatpelose, or hairy cat. I find it hard to believe that anyone thought that caterpillars looked like cats; maybe the French had very small cats.

meadowlands

the meadows are so impoverished around here we have had to plant our own.

closed for the olympics

unless anything very interesting happens we're off to see the corgis and watch the greatest show on earth!

tree creeper

We didn't see much new today during a long hot walk through the meadows by the Inny but we did get a glimpse of a tree creeper with its mouth full of insects.