Spotty

The Boy Wonder and the Baby Brother came to visit today, bringing their mother and uncle with them. As we hadn't seen any of them for over a month this was a real treat for R and me - though I can't deny that the day would have been easier to manage if we' been able to spend more of it outside. It's amazing how small a large house can suddenly feel, with two extra adults and two small but somewhat stroppy children in it.

I found this fly (and not much else) on a rapid trot around the garden this morning, just before the Welsh contingent arrived. It's a Twin-spot Centurion, which is the largest of the UK's soldierflies, and also the latest to emerge, with this being the peak of its flight season. This female is about 1.5cm long, and tricoloured: her thorax is greenish-bronze, while her abdomen is red at the base and blue-black towards the tip. The pair of white spots on the frons, along with the size and the orange legs, are diagnostic of the species.

Shortly after this the rain arrived, and set in for the rest of the day. Despite this the Boy was keen to be out and about, and after R mentioned having seen a mouse in the wood pile by the wildlife pond he insisted that he and I should go and look for it. I warned him that we almost certainly wouldn't find it, and of course we didn't, but his solution was simple: we should move all the logs until we did. No, I said, we would not be doing that, because all kinds of creatures were likely to be sheltering in the pile, and it wouldn't be fair to disturb them. "If there are hibernating butterflies in there," I said, "which there might be, and we uncover them now in this horrible weather, they will probably die." "They won't though," said the Boy, unmoved, "because they can just go somewhere else."

Eventually I won the argument, and we went off to do some more exploring and look for other things. Happily, by the time we arrived back at the house (dripping), B was content with the results of our mini-expedition. "We didn't find the mouse," he announced, "but we did find a woodlouse and a spider." I was so charmed by this that I raided my collection of dragonfly exuviae (which he's been coveting since first catching sight of them), and gave him a Southern Hawker exoskeleton in a bug pot to take home. I'd be surprised if it survived the weekend, but he was very pleased to receive it, and that's really all that matters.

R: C5, D18.