Today's dragonflies

Our dog walk today and we had so many dragonflies zigzagging across the lane and some kindly stopped long enough for me to photograph
including this common darter,

this migrant hawker,

and this brown hawker

A weekend of ladybirds

After yesterdays 22-spot ladybird in my garden, today I found three different species within feet of each other on my dog walk along the lane,
 2 two-spots

 a 7-spot

and five 14-spot ladybirds

common blue damselfly

My first for this year and another indication of summer approaching - the lane today had several dancing common blue damselflies along the cow parsley laden verges.

and another sign of summer - the foxgloves are flowering too

dandelions and bluebells

I have often sung the praises of dandelions, a much maligned flower and undeservedly so in my opinion, as you can read in a much earlier post on this blog from 2011entitled 'our magnificent dandelion'. Today the dandelions along our lane are again in full flower - and the few bluebells in the verges are also just starting to flower too, not in the masses as they are at Jackson's coppice (see my previous post) but just enough to add a splash of blue and the vibrancy of the two flowers together is quite stunning!

dandelions with ground ivy

Dandelions and celandine

dandelions with bluebells

The delights of a spring stroll up the lane

I do enjoy my dog walks up the lane, especially when I have time to enjoy it!
This afternoon the sun shone for me, the birds were singing , there were plenty of hoverflies and bumblebees about along with a few butterflies , today it was small tortoiseshells and peacock,  and if you stood still you could occasionally hear the rustling of vegetation as small mammals moved about, today we caught a glimpse of a young rabbit just a couple of metres away, earlier on this week we watched a couple of mice scurrying along the hedge branches.
Some of these wildlife gems I managed to photograph, while other times I just enjoyed the moment!
here's my picture for today
Starling

Great Diving Beetle in puddle

Photography by Angela Smith

you could almost believe it was spring!

A beautiful warm and sunny dog walk, with just a light breeze, which meant I had a good chance of photographing my first butterfly of the year, so I took my camera and yes right on cue - this small tortoiseshell butterfly turned up at just the right moment!

the birds were in full song too, such as this wren - belting it out!!!

such a big noise from such a tiny bird -

and this chaffinch too!

My favourite kind of dog walks!

what is it about puddles?

When I was a child  puddles would entertain me for ooh .... minutes! I would splash through them, ride my bike through them with legs up high out of the way!, throw stones and soil into them and poor unsuspecting worms and beetles would unfortunately get tossed in occasionally too just so I could see if they would make it out again!
So why is it that they still hold some fascination some 40 plus years on - I still love splashing or slowly wading through puddles watching the small waves and ripple form, providing I have wellies on! and on other days I will stand near to one watching the reflections not wanting to disturb them if it is really still. Today there was a breeze, but the sun was shining and at the top of our lane is a magnificent oak tree and as I approached it the reflections in the puddle across the lane stopped me again, this time I had my camera with me. The reflections kept changing as the breeze picked up and calmed down and as the sun kept getting hidden behind passing clouds and reappearing again, I could have stayed there all afternoon clicking away - as it is I found it very hard to delete any of the photos. I kept 18 which are all currently on my flickr page here are just a small selection, not necessarily the best as they are all different!