Pied Beauty

Plenty of shieldbugs around this morning. I shot a hairy one defecating, (pretty peach-coloured poop). Green, hawthorn and dock were making their jerky progress.

My pic is of a pied on its favourite plant, the white dead nettle. They feast on the seeds. At first glance these insects look like little bird droppings.

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—

  For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

    For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

  Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
        
    And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

 
All things counter, original, spare, strange;

  Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

    With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
        
                  Praise him.

 
Gerard Manley Hopkins