Cuckoo!

I spotted a Nomada cuckoo bee sleeping on a stitchwort plant when we went for our early walk so returned with the macro lens to capture it. These bees lay their eggs in the nests of other bees. They look quite wasp-like, as can be seen from my pic in extras.

I've been searching for my favourite weevil under the oak for weeks and today I finally found an acorn weevil. I know that they play dead but I thought that this one actually was. I picked it up and took it to a leaf in better light. It seemed to be dead to the world while I was capturing it. As soon as I'd finished it scurried off.

We spotted a herd of deer in the distance whilst on our afternoon walk at Lodge Farm. I photographed them as they crossed a track and jumped a ditch. As the last dark deer crossed the gravel I noticed that it was lame. It seemed to negotiate the ditch OK. I was extremely upset, in fact in tears, when I looked at my images on screen. It has a terrible break to its hind leg which has healed with the foot facing in the wrong direction and the bones around the 'knee' not aligned at all. It's too upsetting to post.

I've been thinking about it since and it didn't stand out as disabled as I was watching the herd. It appeared to be feeding normally and wasn't getting left behind. The fact that I've seen lots of three-legged dogs coping well made me feel a bit better about the poor thing.