Category: animals

high days and holy days

cat silhouette
I’m not a great one for remembering and celebrating the International-Day-of-This and the World-Day-of-That, but this week there were two such days I felt were worth noting: Monday was the feast of St Jerome, patron saint of translators, and Thursday was National Poetry Day in the UK.
Continue reading “high days and holy days”

feeling antsy

ant carrying seed
I get lots of newsletters in my inbox and barely have time to do more than scan them, but earlier this week, the headline “Sisterhood of Ants: The Original Social Network” caught my eye, so I clicked through to read the opening paragraph:

As we struggle to understand what it means to be social creatures who meaningfully participate in communities and networks, ants and mice (and the scientists who study them) may be able to tell us something about ourselves.

Continue reading “feeling antsy”

waspish

Do not be deceived.

hover fly
There are many imitations.
Continue reading “waspish”

flowerless thoughts

As I said in “what’s been bugging me“, the local insects may be impressive, but most of them aren’t very colourful – at least not the ones who sit still long enough for me to take pictures. That’s what I like about flower photography: the subject doesn’t run away when you point a camera at it.

At the moment, though, there aren’t many blooms around to brighten the blog pages. It’s partly because of the heat – all the vivid wildflowers of a month or so ago have dried back to straw, and even in the garden the few plants that are in flower are mostly wilting and ragged.

But it’s the insects who are responsible for the chewed petals and holey leaves, so I’m in two minds when I see a bright bug to know if I want it to stay put for a photo or hop, crawl or fly away and leave my plants alone.

green grasshopper

here be dragons

dragonfly closed wings

The cats bring me gifts; they leave them outside the door: lizards, locusts, snakes, birds, eggs, embryos, feathers…

I’m never sure what I’ll find on the verandah in the morning. Never sure if it will be alive or dead, complete or dismembered.

So when I found this lovely creature the other morning, I assumed he was only in one piece because the cats had got bored and abandoned the game when he died of shock.

Naturally, I went to get the camera to take some close-ups… Continue reading “here be dragons”