Ruddy Darter

R and I went to Croome this morning, where we had a nice walk, and decent coffee and cake, but where the dragons were few and far between and I mostly managed to photograph even those quite poorly. Some days are just like that. Luckily, this little Ruddy Darter posed on a seed head long enough for me to (more or less) get my act together. At just under 4cm in length he's one of our smallest dragons; the Common Darter is around a centimetre longer, and the White-faced Darter (which I missed this year) is slightly longer still, but the smallest of all our resident species is the Black Darter, which I'm still hoping I might get to see before the season is out.

I spent much of the afternoon working on yesterday's photos, including tidying up and re-posting the one I blipped, which was definitely improved by the extra attention. In among my garden images from yesterday was this one (which would also have benefited from a clean-up, if I'm honest) of one of my favourite weevils risking life and limb, by walking up to a garden spider to check her out. As I believe I've said before, I think it's possible to be too phlegmatic: sometimes what you need to do is freak out, throw your pinny over your head, and dive for cover.