Slow Down! Take a closer look!

Well, it's been a while but here I am back again! Since I returned from Nicaragua after Christmas there has not been a huge amount happening on the wildlife front! Except! a beautiful smooth snake - keep reading!

2012 is proving to be an eventful year, but although there is not much that is new to share through my photographs, here are a few samples  of that hidden world that is around us all, with a little idle banter thrown in!

Maybe the smallest moth I have ever seen! Discovered in the car, crawling across the windscreen.

So yes, the camera is still ever present, even though a vast amount of our non-working time is taken up with family, even more so since the birth of our beautiful little granddaughter Olivia.

I know that most gardeners go out of there way to destroy 'pests' like this, but it is their world as well! A world that man is rapidly destroying. A few holes in leaves or a life?

Definately nothing new! But beautiful just the same. Remember gardeners - every caterpillar you kill robs the world of a butterfly or moth!

As ever, there is an abundance of life in our tiny little wild section of the garden. Indeed, most of the pictures in this post were taken in just a few square feet!

And of course, all of these bugs attract other life!

Looks like a bee? No, just a hover fly protecting itself by looking like something with a sting in the tail!

A bit more unusual! One of the beefiest millipedes I have seen in this country! Much more like its tropical brothers, but found just up the road at Avon Valley Country park!

And under the same log, several large centipipedes! Again, a more robust type than the common one we find in the garden. Just bigger, or a different species? Who knows!

And here is the star of todays show - only the second smooth snake we have found in the wildlife, and WHAT a specimen! Not the best picture as she was mostly hidden by dead grass.

...and our shield bugs are back and thriving. They have been hard at it (mating) since the spring. Two places we have seen these this year - on top of a volcano in Nicaragua, and in our back garden! Pretty diverse eh?

At first glance, just another fly - but look at those eyes!

OY! Get off my flower!!!

The mosquitos were ramant under the apple tree this evening! I didn't have to sit on the grass for long before this one fancied a nibble. Yup, I certainly suffer for my art!

So, nothing amazing to show you this time, but I was way overdue showing you something! The wet April certainly kept the life a little dormant, but it is starting to bloom now, so keep watching!!!

Comments really welscome as always - and remember, when you are out and about, just 'Slow down and take a closer look'!