Lazy Saturday afternoon

I'm totally overwhelmed by the response to my last two entries - a huge thank you to everyone who has commented on or favourited either picture. I'm trying to get round to everyone personally but it may take a while - and I'm sure I'll overlook one or two - so sorry if it's you. Also a big welcome to my new subscribers :)

I've had a photographically lazy day today!! This morning I agreed to take Pete to a site he's surveying - this should have been straightforward but at some point the local council had decided to move the footpath, and it took a lot of to and froing, reversing and cursing before we found it!!

I then took the dogs for a walk along the Maxey Cut, a drainage channel through arable farmland. I was amazed at the number of sedge warblers I heard - almost every clump of marginal vegetation had one raucously singing. I was going to try for a photograph when I realised I had left my SD card behind, and the spare was in China with Chris! I wasn't that disappointed - most of the warblers were skulking and the bright sunlight was painfully harsh.

I don't visit this area very often, but the bird life seemed surprisingly good, with many reed buntings and yellowhammers flitting along the banks and along the hedgerow. In the distance I heard the first turtle doves of the year, accompanied by the sound of the cuckoo, and at one point a little egret flew along the watercourse. By the time we got back to the car at 10.15am it was too hot to walk comfortably in the open!

At lunchtime I took Alex and Ben to buy a new large paddling pool, which they filled this afternoon. The garden has been filled with assorted young people ever since, all dropping round to cool off. Once evening arrived they decided to light a bonfire and as I write this I can smell the wood smoke - I suppose they felt the need to warm up again!

Before the mayhem started I just had time to shoot this large red damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula, the first of the year to emerge from our ponds. This species is very distinctive, being by far the commonest rof the two British red damselflies and the only one with black legs. It is usually the first to emerge in the spring.