Wildlife Watch Chez Joules
The jungle, looking right from the patio: sumac framing the mahonia, behind it is greengage, hawthorn (in flower) and to the left the goat-willow.
It was raining this morning when I got up to take Kai in to school, so I sallied forth to wreak death and destruction and total slaughter on the garden's mollusc population.
Just as well I did - one of the little buggers was just finishing eating through the stem of one of my newly planted tomatoes, dammit! But I had my revenge - it was first under the scissors...
On a more pleasant note, up near the apple tree an Eyed Hawk Moth had pulled itself from its cocoon and was drying its wings on the underside of a horizontal fence beam:
8 a.m.
Dropped Kai off with his friends, shopped at butcher and Sainsbug's, checked on the moth when I got back: it had moved down to a bluebell stalk at the base of the fence:
10 a.m.
Trudged over to Tesco for shopping round 2 (and found that they've now mixed all their organic fruit and veg in with the non-organic,
and on the top bloody shelf, no less, a bit of a stretch even for me) and checked the moth on my return around 11.15 a.m. ->
I think it's pretty much finished now, just gaining strength before it flies away. Unfortunately you can't see the eyes - at rest, it only flashes those when threatened, and I don't want to alarm it, it has enough to do recovering from the metamorphosis - but there's a gorgeous photo
here... We seem to get one of these moths hatching in the garden every other year: I can remember four going back over the last nine years (one year Argent caught it before I could stop him, unfortunately).
I'm hoping for an
Elephant Hawk Moth too: we grow rosebay willow herb behind the shed to encourage them, and have had a couple hatch in previous years. Their
caterpillars are amazing, especially in threat-posture.
And I still have a ragwort, for the
cinnabar moth
caterpillars!
<- There's a large caterpillar on Kai's garlic - haven't had time to check what it is yet.
Newts in the frewtnog pool ->
Not terrible clear - they're very skittish creatures and easily startled, but there are two of them in the photo.
In other news:
2AC 1.4.11 is nearly finished. I'm now undecided as to whether to leave the first book there or continue onto Section 5. I'd prefer the latter, I think...
(Have I mentioned recently how much I love my digicam...?)
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Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 3:33 am
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