Chasing the blues away

It is hard to stay down when you are with such an irrepressible butterfly basher as Fizz. She gets so much joy from bouncing about in fields it is infectious. Our favourite walk at the moment is around the farm fields. The grass is so thick and taller than she is,  she has to “bounce” just to get through it but she seems to love it.

So my apologies for my absence over the last couple of days but I have been a bit under the weather. Feeling better today, I have a lot to catch up on.

Fizz didn’t get a walk yesterday, I couldn’t face it. Looking out of my window the whole of the UK was “under the weather,” it must have been pretty frustrating if that was your holiday day.

It is raining steadily again today but I have a plan that if nothing else I will make a video of just how wet a dog can get.

So here are my Blues. Little glimpses taken over the last few days when we did get out.

 

Common Blue Butterfly (Male)

The long hunt is finally over, I got the little beggar this morning. Did I say little beggar? I meant beautiful little Butterfly, the one that I have spent so many fruitless hours chasing round this bl**dy field.

Now I am complete. I have got everything that I ever wanted and I will never have to go through this again. What a sense of relief. I am finally a very happy man.

Isn’t that a beautiful Butterfly?

Oh no!

Fizz! Fetch me my Butterfly Restrainers. I need you to tie me up!

I have just seen a Clouded Yellow. Here we go again….

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..