N is for Natures Bounty!

I spent the afternoon rewarding myself for all that mud-puddling! And the bee-stings; 5 and counting this year, only 7 in the whole of last year, mowing is pretty-much out 'till they calm down a bit!

The blackcurrants were actually growing wild between the railway and the pond, someone tipped their garden-waste into the reeds in the dark - no doubt..there are lots of little ones, so a commando-raid in the autumn may well see us with a line of canes in the new year!

Also round the pond has been this chap (or chappess?), started life about 4 weeks ago, shorter that my little finger-nail and mistakable for a little bit of dried leaf, now the size of my thumb, and always easy to find as it hangs around on top of the hazelnut leaves, clearly birds have learnt a lesson there...leave well alone. Google tells me it's a Rusty Tussock-Moth.

Meanwhile when I first found these (there's a whole bunch of them) I wondered if they had a parasitic or fungal disease, but apparently they are meant to look like bird-lime! And while caterpillar-like, they are actually 'just' larvae; of a Saw-Fly.