Toad and Friends: This Week in Our Wild Garden

 

We looked out the window yesterday morning at about 10.30 ... and were greeted with the sight of this rather magnificent toad. This is the second time we have seen the toad on our patio this summer. 

 

I have decided to post the extremely poor record shot above as much as a note to myself as anything. 

The point is that I saw the Migrant hawker in the lower half of this image, and took a quick photo, little realising that there was actually a second dragonfly above (see black arrow). Result: the top dragonfly has been cut in two unnecessarily. It was only a record shot (a quick first image in case the creature flew away), and as such the quality doesn't worry me too much; but what concerns me is the fact that even after this photograph had been taken, I still failed to notice the second insect. I have been thinking about William Blake and his famous, albeit metaphorical, line about seeing a universe in a sand particle; well, it seems I need to sharpen up my powers of observation and concentration considerably.

Below: this is a better image of the top dragon (which in mind at the time was the lower and only one, so presumably by this time the lower one had flown), showing off the distinctive yellow golf-tee marking on S2, just below the wings:

 

 

The photo below shows one of our two Wasp spiders. You can see a white food parcel near the top and what will become a second once the spider has completed her task. I'm wondering if she has wrapped up a small bee.

And finally for now, my first garden sighting of a tiny 22-spot ladybird. The sun was in completely the wrong place and the insect was only about 3mm in length, but at least I was able to identify it from the poor-quality photo. 

There have not been many butterflies about this week in the garden; perhaps it has been too windy. Even so, we have logged Peacock, Red Admiral, Large and Small White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Comma and Holly Blue. I wonder what the weekend will bring. I am still hoping to see my first Painted Lady of the season.