Reprise

R and I had a busy day today. This morning I had appointments in Evesham for my Covid-19 booster and annual 'flu vaccination, and because the Evesham Mop is on, and half of the town therefore unnavigable, R sweetly offered to drive me and drop me off as near to the vaccination centre as he could.

Then we went to Stratford, and because the Indian summer has returned and it was almost bizarrely warm and sunny for the end of the first week in October, we took a snap decision to have a picnic lunch in the Bancroft Gardens. Of the many ways we could have done this, we chose to buy gyros from Tzatziki 34, which were amazing. I probably won't need to eat again till about Wednesday. One of the best things for me about the whole experience was getting into a really interesting conversation with the boss, who turns out to be extremely knowledgeable about local wildlife. What more could you ask for than receiving expert wildlife site advice, while your pork gyros wrap is prepared?!

I'd hoped to get some dragonfly photos at Lucy's Mill after lunch, but the Migrant Hawker count there seems to have plummeted since my last visit. Of the half dozen males I spotted, two were far too distant for photos, and the other four were in brisk competition with each other, zooming around the reed beds and bickering furiously, which prevented me from capturing any flight shots. I did get a couple of images of perched individuals, but I don't think they're especially interesting. 

In the event I find myself preferring this Orange Ladybird, which was noodling around the quince tree in the garden late this afternoon, searching for food. While most ladybird species in the UK are carnivorous, feeding mainly on aphids, Orange and 22-spot Ladybirds both feed on mildews on the surfaces of plant leaves. 22-spots, which are only 3-4mm long, are entirely fungivorous, and I usually find them in and around my honeysuckle vines, which are prone to mildew; but Orange Ladybirds, which are about twice as big, are mainly tree-dwelling, and as well as mildew they will also eat various tree aphids. Until the 1980s Orange Ladybirds were relatively rare in this country, living only in ancient tracts of broad-leaved woodland, but since then their numbers and range have expanded dramatically, and they can now turn up pretty much anywhere there are sycamore or ash trees. Still, it's unusual for me to have found two active individuals in the garden in the space of three days (though to be completely accurate, Thursday's found me). I can sometimes beat them from one of the Norway maples, but generally I think they prefer to hang out well above human height, and I only spot an occasional one at roost on the underside of a leaf. The unseasonably warm weather has probably kept them active and feeding.

This evening we went to the private viewing (get us!!) of the Broadway Festival Art Competition Exhibition, at Bretforton Theatrebarn, having been invited because R is one of this year's finalists. He's being almost annoyingly modest about this achievement, but if he won't brag about it himself I'm perfectly prepared to do it for him. If you're in the area, it's an interesting exhibition across quite a wide range of media, with all the works available to buy. The venue (which we'd never been to before, despite having lived no more than five miles away for the past thirty years) is well worth a visit in its own right.