Bee's eye view....

Another tremendously windy day, and what did I try and photograph? The stigma of my favourite Geranium, the intensely pink 'Ann Folkard'. I started out trying to take a photograph of the whole flower, but then became fascinated by the star-shaped stigma, and the pattern of flower guides,which direct bees towards the centre of the flower where the anthers are.

Until I looked through the macro lens I'd never noticed the wrinkled texture of the stigma, and the way it holds on to the grains of pollen that have landed on it, clearly visible as white spheres. Each pollen grain will develop a long tube, that will gradually grow down through the stigma and enable transfer of the male chromosomes to the developing ovules, the necessary prerequisite to seed formation.

The bat and moth night was well attended. We saw plenty of pipistrelles (both common and soprano) and a few Natterer's bats, which were somewhat larger and flew quite differently, as well as having different calls. The wind dropped long enough to allow a good range of moths to arrive including the very rare Concolorous and a very pretty Small Elephant Hawk. There were also several cockchafers and, rather surprisingly, a male glow-worm, out almost a month early!

Thankfully today's been a fairly quiet day. I did some preliminary survey work in a local wood in the morning and spent the afternoon trying to catch up with some gardening - it looks neater now I've cut down all the cow parsley and mown the lawn. Late this afternoon Alex arrived back from Dorset safely - though the strong winds meant they never got into the sea!!