Brown

Until six weeks ago, I'd never seen a Field Grasshopper (Chorthippus brunneus) in the garden, but this is my second of the season. The first was rather intricately marked, but this one is much more cryptic, which is why it took me a couple of minutes to track her down, after first seeing something go ping at my feet when I was poking around the yard wall for jumping spiders. In the end I had to rummage gently among the weeds with my monopod, and wait for her to spring again. Offered a dry stalk she jumped away several times, but in the end relented and climbed onto it. Having secured a few portraits I lowered her gently back down to the gravel, and watched her bounce safely away under cover.

It was a relief to be well enough to be out in the garden wielding a camera this afternoon, because overnight I had a bad reaction to one of the vaccines I was given yesterday, and first thing this morning I hadn't been confident that I'd be getting up at all. The symptoms were exactly the same as those of the virus I had a couple of weeks ago - fever, involuntary writhing, nausea, and a crippling headache - so I think it's reasonable to assume that that bug was either this year's 'flu or this year's Covid, and the vaccine caused a sharp reaction from my immune system that brought the symptoms back out again. Luckily they passed off pretty quickly - a second forty eight hours in bed was very much not near the top of my wishlist - and I'm confident that I'm now positively bursting with antibodies. As to whether it was 'flu or Covid that I had two weeks ago, I can't be sure. I tested CV-negative twice, but a choir friend has been told by her GP that the older generation of tests aren't picking up the newer variants well, and that if it looks like Covid and feels like Covid, the chances are that that's probably what it is.