shady woodpecker

a juvenile great spotted woodpecker, spotted in the woods today. These birds are very shy and like to stay out of line of sight.

Spot has been told he has got to do some time in dog borstal to cure his obsession with blogging ... more of this soon.

is it national bug week?

It is national bug week (link), we ought to celebrate. Here are three butterflies caught in action today, the marbled white (top) the meadow brown (middle) and the ringlet (bottom), feeding on clover and thistle, and just plain resting.

more from the spider's web

I was fascinated to find this silky spider nursery full of junior spiders, guarded by mum lurking in the undergrowth. The nursery is surprisingly robust. I have no idea which species of spider builds these nurseries.

country lanes

meadowsweet, valerian, foxgloves, hedge bedstraw, wood sage and ferns provide the framework for our lanes. It's well worth clicking on the lane label for this post to get a feel of how the lanes change through the year.

meadowsweet and tufts

meadowsweet (the white one) and tufted vetch (the blue one, and a member of the pea family). Meadow sweet has two distinct fragrances and has been used for centuries to cover floors and make rooms smell sweet. It seems that the name is in fact a corruption of "mede sweet" and it was used to flavour mead. One fragrance is soft, and one is sharp, and this explains another of its names in Yorkshire, courtship and matrimony. What can this be referring to??

The strawberry gateaux in the picture below are the ovaries which will become the seed. I like the intricate shape of the whorls on what will become its very distinctive seed.

another day in the hammock

the meadows were very damp yesterday morning and we all got soaked by the knee high grasses. These little chaps were just taking it very easy waiting for lunch to drop into their laps.