Summer feast

First of all I would like to give a very belated but sincere thanks to all of you who left comments, stars and hearts for my Chance Encounter on the 19th. They have happily trickled in over a few days and have now elevated the orange tipped butterfly to my second highest rated shot!. Thank you also for your kind comments on my garden yesterday - during the winter I nearly wept it was so muddy and awful, so I feel very chuffed you like its late spring look.

The gorgeous weather continues and my birds are delighted that I am home from my holidays and feeding them again. This male siskin is thoroughly enjoying the niger seed in the feeder and spent ages taking a seed then laboriously mouths it, presumably to soften and digest it. This blip shows a seed in his beak.

This morning I had another glorious walk on the moor where the hills are becoming hazier and more distant as the warm weather progresses. Cara and Bruce were joined today by a new friend, Millie, a delightful black and white springer spaniel who is visiting friends of mine. Luckily they bounded around together as the walk had to be speedy as both my friend and I were on early duty for invigilation where we had a room full of 50 youngsters sitting three long exams between them. So we had to concentrate hard to ensure they received the correct papers.

It was Biology today and one of the questions intrigued me. Have two lists, one related and one unrelated. For example: large, big, great, huge, wide, and for the second list - late, cheap, rare, bright and rough. A group had 30 seconds to see these, then they had to write them down in the correct order from memory. Then the same group had to read a book for an hour and then see how many they could remember in the correct order again. The statistics were tabulated and the question obviously related to short term memory but I thought it would be a fun exercise to do ...... or not! I leave it with you!