Pale and interesting

Two large and welcome arrivals this morning in pallid daffodil colours: the Light Emerald and the Swallowtailed moth. I saw one or the other flitting like a ghost through the twilight when I put the moth trap out just before the ten o'clock news, and here they are dozing on a larch-lap fence nearby. This happens quite a lot: moths not actually entering the trap but settling somewhere comfortable and close at hand and going to sleep there. It appears to be additional evidence for the theory that the powerful mercury vapour lamp disrupts moths' navigation rather than actually 'attracting' them. The Swallowtailed was in particularly good condition and must have emerged from its chrysalis only recently.

I had a job in Grasmere yesterday, lucky me, and stopped on the way back to check my notes at the Eagle and Child in Staveley. It has a very nice garden by the river Gowan and I ate my sandwich watching a heron organising its own lunch. How lucky am I, I thought, that I can hand over a piece of paper and in return get a delicious Cumberland ham and tomato bap, while the heron had to stalk about and stand like a statue for nearly half-an-hour before finally landing a wriggling fish. I'm afraid I didn't capture the actual strike, being both incompetent and quite a long way away (hence blurring, sorry), but here's the noble bird. The Eagle and Child? They shoud rename it the Heron and Me.