Blue-Tailed Damselfly Action

My finger has just been privileged to have been chosen to be a Blue-Tailed Damselfly's perch for over half an hour! Bethany found it on the floor. It's been a pretty dull day with a few bouts of sunshine - one of which was convincing enough for the Damselfly to believe it was going to be ideal flying time. I guess it must have been cold and needed to increase it's body heat before taking to the air again, because it was walking along the floor looking very sorry for itself. I held out my finger in front of it and it climbed on board and there it stayed. Fortunately for me the skies stayed pretty miserable and grey so it just sat and waited, with it's front feet clasped round the end of my fingernail.

Straight on it looked as though it was staring me out! It was truly stunning. A beautiful specimen, with a shimmery bronze and black abdomen ending in a bright blue patch at the end. The stripes along the thorax were a gorgeous bright green and it's perfection just blew me away.

In need of another Bug-Fix

The other day, as my children ate their breakfast at the dining room table and I stood at the window looking out onto a snow covered garden, I said out loud "oh I can't wait for Spring - I'm missing the bugs".

I spoke too soon... that morning as I combed through Holly's hair I found... a nit egg... and then we had a tummy bug. That was really not what I meant.

However, since then I have seen - a caterpillar and a Lacewing - that's more like it! I reckon the caterpillar came into the house courtesy of my gardener husband's work clothes. I first noticed it at around 9:30am, crawling across the ceiling from the corner of the room. I wasn't sure what to do. I couldn't put it outside - that was just a death sentence in the middle of winter, so I let it crawl aimlessly and it caught my eye every time I walked under it.

At around 5pm we sat down to eat dinner and I looked up and saw that it was heading straight for the smoke alarm. By the time we'd finished eating, it had disappeared, presumably into the smoke alarm! Not sure if that's a good thing or not...

Lacewings are beautiful creatures, like little fairies - their wings are so delicate, just like lace or net. The females have a very nifty way of protecting their eggs from being predated by crawling insects, such as ants. An egg laid directly on a leaf is asking for trouble, so a female lacewing produces a drop of silk which then hardens as it is stretched to make a long thin stalk. Then an individual egg is laid on the end, suspended in mid air, safely away from predators! Genius.

Roll on Summer!

Winter Bug Sports!

I was getting withdrawal symptoms - there are few bugs about in the depths of winter, but my daughters found a Snail Racing printout whilst we were having a January clear out, so we made it and had our very own Snail Race!

I really didn't think they'd manage to find any snails, but they came back into the house with no less than 32 little "snailets" (my children are well trained in bug hunting)!

Spikey (Orange), Sticky (purple) and Smelly (green) raced to the finish... and the winner was... Smelly!!!

You'll be pleased to hear that no snails were harmed during the making of this race and we released them all back into the wild, exactly where we found them!

Happy Days!