Im Alive....

...and the world shines for me today....!
                 Jeff Lynne/ELO

...and indeed the sun has been shining today....so I thought I would wander the garden to see what I could find....the male Blackbird was sitting in one of his favourite places to let everyone know he was still in residence...

Blackbird, Turdus merula

This isnt too bad a shot with my new camera (see the ditch incident on the gravel pits page...!)...it has a much better zoom and not bad for a point and click camera....heres some Goldfinches sitting down the other end of the garden taken at quite some distance.....

Goldfinch, Carduelis carduelis

They are breeding somewhere very local to me which is quite nice.

I found this Damselfly on the Buddleia (Buddleja)....red Damselfly are great to find, mostly because there cant be too much confusion over any particular species...its either Large Red or Small Red.  As Small Red Damselfly are more scarce the chances are you will have found a Large Red Damselfy, as is this one.  The Large variety are also to be seen earlier than most other members of the family....

Large Red Damselfly, Pyrrhosoma nymphula

Today this Ichneumon wasp was sitting on the moth trap....

...and this one was in the trap on the 12th....

...they look the same species to me...you need endless amounts of patience to identify Ichneumon wasps....there are over 4000 species in this country and the identification chart showing various features is rather large...and even then you may need to disassemble it to make sure...and as they cant be reassembled im certainly not starting that sort of thing....anyway...they look great....and thats enough for me!