First

Despite being tired after our busy weekend, I managed to get through a good chunk of my work backlog today, alternating photo processing, cooking, domestic administration, and even a token amount of gardening. All in all, I'm pretty happy with my achievements.

It was overcast for most of the day, which probably depressed invertebrate numbers in the garden because some species only ever seem to appear when it's sunny. It was warm though, with the temperature in the mid-teens, and the inverts who were out and about were all quite active.

I'm posting this very fresh Holly Blue because he's the first of the year here, and seeing him gave me both pleasure and reassurance: since the tree surgeon came, back in the winter, to prune our huge laurel tree, I've been worrying about the possible effect on our Holly Blue population because it's one of their favourite oviposition sites. Despite this, the butterfly almost lost top spot to one of my other spring target species, a female honeysuckle sawfly, which I noticed on the same shrub at almost the same instant. The sawfly was not cooperative though, and the Holly Blue did allow me to get quite close. A tighter crop here would have eliminated the flea beetle, but might have left my subject looking crowded.

There's plenty of information about the Holly Blue here, if you need it. And I'd love it if you would take a look at my other favourite photos of the day, which I've posted on my Facebook page. The Issus coleoptratus nymph is one of around twenty, in various stages of development, that I beat out of a patch of ivy at the side of the house, and it was amazing to see the size difference between the early and late instars. Based on its wing development, the one in my post is probably 5th instar, which makes me hopeful that I might find an adult one day soon.