Crosswort

A lovely tripette out to my favourite meadow this morning resulted in my spending over 4 hours there photographing the Duke of Burgundys  and so much more. On the way back to the car I encountered huge clumps of this beautiful plant Crosswort  Cruciata laevipes. 
A member of the Bedstraw family it has whorls of leaves with long white hairs and hundreds of tiny star like yellow flowers...not much to look at from afar, but really beautiful in macro.
Once again I feel the need to use my extra shot, because I saw my very first dragonfly of 2015! A Hairy dragonfly Brachytron pratense,  Britain's earliest and smallest hawker, so called because it is hairy on the thorax.
As if this wasn't exciting enough, I also heard the Cuckoo!!