The young emperor

It's definitely been a long day!! Up at half past six and out of the house by eight, to drive to Oxford for a day's surveying hay meadows and helping to train students. I had to get my head around the vegetative identification of grasses (which is always difficult at the start of the season) and have my estimates of cover checked to ensure consistency within the Floodplains Meadow project. We finally finished at six, and I then had to drive for another two hours before arriving home at eight.

My knees are groaning after having spent much of the day kneeling, and my eyes are burning from having to search so carefully in bright sunshine. And when I got home I hadn't even taken any photographs. The day was just too work focussed, and most of the meadow species weren't yet flowering. I thought I might drop into a country park on the way home and get a nice evening shot of the River Nene, but it clouded over!

Luckily the eggs of the emperor moth I blipped back in March were fertile, and we have been raising the caterpillars in captivity. Some of them are quite large now, about four to five centimetres long, and are a vivid green with black hoops, yellow wart like spots and a surprising range of bristles and hairs. So that's the best I can do today!!