libellula

I have never seen this insect before but there were a couple at Kit Hill Quarry today. I think it is a broad bodied libellula, a member of the darter dragon flies ... in a quarry near you ...get out and see it, take a walk.

betony

betony tastefully set off by red grass. It is very abundant and bushy in this strange field, betoine poupre in French, a member of the woundwort family and much used in herbal medicine

noisy moths

on the betony was this largish moth which was making a very loud thrumming noise, presumably to scare us away. We cannot identify it but it has an odd yellow mark on its wing. Any ideas? Is it possibly a humming bird hawk moth? Maybe not, but it was very noisy. And it has alien looking green eyes

bladderseed field

Penny's piece, full of cornish bladderseed, betony and a hot dog.

scabious

field scabious, another common but beautiful and complex wild flower, growing in our hedgerow. Why scabious? Well, because the juice was once regarded as a cure for scabies (in Latin scabiosus) and other itchy skin complaints.

old mill

on the path down to Old Mill. Almost everything you could ever want to know about this area is at the link, except the number of dogs who have won prizes. The lurcher environment domain of the English Indices of Dogivation 2004 focuses on the quality of dogs in the area using measures such as the quality of barking, chasing around and performance at shows. These Indices use lower level Super Output Areas which splits England into 32,482 smaller areas, and each of these areas is ranked, with rank 1 having the worst dogs and rank 32,482 the best dogs.
In these Indices the Stoke Climsland Ward is split into 2 parts - the part which contains the rest of the world and some of Stoke Climsland Parish is ranked at 11,620, and the part that contains the rest of Stoke Climsland Parish and Venterdon is ranked at 32,483.

the italian connection

eddy spinoni posing for Dad on the promise that he will show the picture to Harriet, and support Italy tonight, so "go the blues". It is not clear that I know what blue is given my dichromatic vision and lack of reference cones at appropriate wavelength, but so what the hell, France and Italy look all the same to me.

Now what about that portuguese dog called Ronaldo and his australian friend Roo?