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Delicately fanning through the meadow grass this shimmering tiny little turquoise lacewing grabbed me. Often called golden-eyes because of the gold or brassy shine in their eye - perhaps I should call him James.

While hubs played on his tractor I was let loose to capture my blip on the meadows in Malvern and this caught my eye. I never thought there was more than one lacewing fly - but no, there appear on inspection to be quite a few but until you get down for a closer look it's not that apparent what the minuscule differences are!

Getting the ID book out, my lacewing has quite a few black markings on it's head and a very blue tinge. You can quite clearly here see the 2nd antennal segment is black which identifies it as Chrysopa Perla. An aphid feeder so not a bad thing to have in your garden!

We had been taken out last night to Ingestre Stables up near Stafford by some friends to see a production of Camelot. Outside in the open stable yard of a fabulous country house with it ominously starting to drizzle, murky grey clouds overhead.... it did look dodgy.... so umbrellas and wet weather gear for that quintessentially British open air picnic were on standby. However thankfully it blew through and we all had a fabulous time.

James wasn't camera shy thankfully so I managed to get near enough with the macro lens for a quick shot - took all of hmmm 007 minutes.