Fierce

"And though she be but little she is fierce."
William Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night's Dream (1605)

According to my Wild Guide to Britain's Spiders, March is the beginning of the Zebra Spider season, so I was a bit surprised to come across this female on just the second day of the month. She was jumping very energetically around one of the honeysuckles, which didn't make her particularly easy to photograph, and wasn't all that keen on having a macro lens stuck in her face, which didn't help. Many photos were taken, most of which were quite promptly discarded for either lack of focus or lack of spider, but this one works well enough, I think. A female Zebra Spider is only around 6mm long, but they are fierce little hunters: within seconds I saw this one pounce on two small flies, and devour them both. This was the first, but she left it lying on the leaf when she then spotted the chance to make another kill, and only returned to it when she'd eaten the second victim.

R and I had another full-on day with the family. We spent a fun morning wrangling the Baby Brother, then were joined by the Boy Wonder and his Daddy, who arrived in time for lunch. B major was still visibly vibrating from yesterday's surfeit of chocolate, but was very sweet with the baby, who clearly adores him. After lunch we all played out in the garden for a while, then G took the little one home, leaving B major and his mother to make their way back later. 

The Boy was still pretty hyper, so L suggested an expedition to allow him to work off some energy, and he led us all through the village and off into the countryside, along a footpath neither R nor I had ever explored before, despite having lived here for almost a quarter of a century. Part way along this track he found a tree that was growing almost horizontally, and promptly began scrambling up it. Had L not been there, I'm sure R and I would have felt the need to go all grandparental at this point and try to coax him down, but having been a fearless tree climber herself as a child, L was quite relaxed about the situation, and simply coached him on the best hand and foot holds to use.

After dinner, as he was being loaded into the car for the journey home, I thanked the Boy for coming to see us, and he replied, "Thank you for inviting me. I love this place!" - which R and I are agreed is absolutely the nicest thing any visitor has ever said to us.