Peeping out from the edge of our yard, this baby rabbit can hear the incessant screeches of the young buzzard, calling from the top of the oak tree behind the house.
The parent birds circle overhead looking for prey to shut up the chick who is probably almost as big as they are by now. They see the little rabbits and if they get desperate enough they will swoop low around the house and carry one off in their talons but they prefer to hunt in the fields and woods at a safer distance from human habitation.
So these little chaps can dash about in relative safety, exploring underneath the cars by the house, annoying the house sparrows and occasionally meeting a mirror image. Sniffing as they go.
They are nesting under our wood pile and are in for a shock as Ali and Dan are coming soon with the dogs and suddenly everything will be smelling a lot scarier!
Back in Wales and we’ll have a peaceful few days before we get stuck into all the chores.
6am on the first morning and all hell breaks out — smoke detectors all over the house are screaming hysterically!
The moment we are both risen and have worked out which way to run — they all stop.
Wild fires have not reached this soggy part the planet, we inspect the alarms — all bleep obediently when we push the little button — one gives a tiny red flicker — we change its battery.
Next night they all go off again at 2am, — I lift my head and groan, Bill goes and switches off the circuit. 5am they really up the angst. Because they can no longer whisper to each other through their wires they are shouting to each other instead — first one bip-bip-bip, then another.
We’ll give them a little rest — there is no way of working out which ones have flat batteries and which do not — we will replace them all, except that some are radio-active, automatons that don’t need batteries at all –fancy that!
Willy Price, local battery mogul feels obliged to give us the official warning, “You know you are much more likely to break your neck replacing these than you are to be incinerated in your own home.”
We know it’s true but we pay the £47 anyway. We replace them all — even the one at the top of the stairwell, from the top of the twelve foot ladder propped on a wooden block and wedged with the atlas that doesn’t show Ukraine. I drop this smoke detector from the top of the ladder and it bounces on the wooden floor below, Bill leaves his post, steadying the ladder, and with unaccustomed expletives gives chase.
It is retrieved, brushed down and replaced with a submissive little bleep. That’ll teach it.
We reconnect the power. That afternoon there are several other little bleeps then all is quiet.
Yesterday, buoyed up by recent success but frustrated by even more recent dull weather, the sun came out and we made haste to Royston in search of rare butterflies. It was very hot! Too hot really for a couple of septuaginta-tresgenarians (this might not be quite right but I’m concussed — I’ll come to that later!). It was also very hilly but the butterflies were fantastic.
Common BlueCommon Blue, underwing — there were swarms of them.Brown Argus — Bill’s picture.
It is tiny but they were flitting around all over the chalk downs, more ‘ups’ at our age. So good was the butterfly watching that we decided to stay on after lunch — it was hotter and there were swarms of blue butterflies but only one possible Adonis Blue and it flew away before Bill could snap it — my camera is sadly at the menders — I dropped it and it is hurt.
By now I was all behind and had to rush into town before the shops shut — gosh it was hot!
During the night I didn’t feel at all well — why do we say that? I felt bad!
I got up to visit the bathroom — feeling very queezy. Next thing I know, I’m waking up somewhere I don’t immediately recognise — something diaphanous is waving above me — have I died?
I call out weakly, Bill is already up, he awoke with the crash but headed in the wrong direction. I call out again and am shortly found — head in the shower, huge bump on my forehead– how did it get here? I’m lying on my back. Turns out I am not dead. My knee hurts and is a funny colour but my shoulder decides not to make a fuss despite the huge contusion — it is biding it’s time.
I am picked up and put back to bed — I can make this last until lunchtime!
After a light lunch I rally to look at the Holly Blue in the garden.
Diagnosis? Was probably asleep all the time but fell off the loo when I slipped back into deep, REM sleep (do they still call it that) when I fell off my perch. It’s a miracle I’ve made it to 73!
Last month we were on the chalk hills of Gloucestershire — butterfly hunting, and not without success!
Large blue butterfly
Another large blue on Daneway Banks SSSI in the Cotswolds
Daneway banks are famous for the butterflies. Their steep chalk grassland is peppered with clumps of wild marjoram and thyme. It was a sunny day and there was a helpful and knowledgeable volunteer from the Butterfly Conservancy to point us in the right direction!
No Brown Argus spotted, not for lack of trying, but there were cavorting Marbled Whites a plenty.
Marbles white butterfly on marjoram
Mating marbled whites
And several Essex skippers, similar to small skippers but with black tipped antennae and a black stripe parallel to the leading edge of the forewing.
Essex Skipper
It was very hot and cooling off in the dappled shade of a nearby woodland we found my favourite butterfly — the silver washed fritillary.
Silver washed fritillary
Next week, if the weather cheers up, we are off to hunt the Adonis Blue and the Brown Argus.
dianaashworth 