The Scene Of The Crime

Yesterday after @RedFlash wished us luck, we went out to church yard to look for glow worms. It was a mild night and as expected we found quite a few females on display. I'd just got my camera out when my better half reported our first male glow worm!

We took quite a few pictures but as I had already blipped and I didn't want to tamper with the EXIF date of the picture I've loaded the best picture into my blipfolio in case you want to have a look.

Glow worms are not worms, they are beetles and only the adult females glow. As young they are called grubs and they hunt slugs and snails many times their size killing them with a venomous bite. After two or three years they undergo metamorphosis turning into adults. The males look like your regular small brown beetle, but the females are large bags of eggs with no wings and two bright green glowing segments near the end of their abdomen. They are quite rare now in the UK - hence the map data is vague.

Today on the way home we walked past the church and decided to wait until some cars went past to check the speed indicating device that is currently installed on a lamp post to check that it had been reset to the correct speed as it was set too low this morning. I did consider posting a picture of a speeding local but thought better of it - the last person to post photographs of speeders round here got a lot of aggravation.

Anyhow the picture is instead the church adjacent to the speed device and the location of last nights glowing encounter. The church is apparently old but I think it's been got at by the Victorians and I wouldn't describe it as pretty on either the outside or the inside. Allegedly the church was at the centre of the village but after the black death the village moved and the church didn't and as a result it's now on the edge of the village - but that could just be local rural myth.