Picnic

"Is it," I asked myself, "maybe a little too early in the season to be posting predation porn?"

I considered the question for all of about two seconds, before deciding that it's never too early. Plus, it seemed only fit and proper to memorialise the unfortunate fly, which was unlucky to meet a male* green crab spider so early in the year, when the books give their season as May and June. And also, the little blighter provided by far my hardest photo challenge of the day, because of his size (about 4mm long), position (on a quince shoot at head height) and extremely uncooperative behaviour: I had to operate the camera one-handed, while pulling the twig lower with the other hand, and twisting it back and forth as the spider repeatedly darted round to the further side of the shoot. He even ballooned a couple of times, taking his lunch with him, but I managed to catch the silk on both occasions and replace him on the quince. By the end of the five minutes it took me to get this shot, we were heartily sick of the sight of each other.

The morning had been heavily overcast and cold, but R and I warmed ourselves up with a couple of hours of fairly heavy gardening. R cleared the soft fruit bed in the secret garden of wood avens and bramble, and I renovated a section of the large rose bed that I'd allowed to become very wild and overgrown. I was able to plant an opium poppy and a cluster of euphorbias in the sizeable gap that appeared when I dug out all the grass and weeds.

By the time we finished our work the warmer, brighter weather promised by the weather forecast had materialised, so after lunch I took the camera and went out hunting invertebrates. As well as the crab spider I found several other nice specimens in the garden, but my second image tonight was taken at Tilly's field, where a single very fresh red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) was among a number of male solitary bees who were sunning themselves on a gatepost. Looking at my records from across the past few years, I see that the beginning of April isn't especially early for the emergence of Osmia bicornis, but this spring has got off to such a bad start, and up till now has provided so few records, that it feels early. I can only hope that the appearance of this exquisite, gleaming creature is a sign that things in the bee department generally are about to look up.

* Male and female green crab spiders look very similar, though the females are bigger, but the spotty front legs here make me reasonably sure that this one is a male.