A hoppin’ and a buzzin’

I have been wondering about the tadpoles. They were good and fat when the hot weather came, but since the weather broke I have seen nothing of them. I suspected them of lurking at the bottom to grow their legs. However, with the able assistance of the lovely Eilidh who has investigated thoroughly over the last two days the mystery has been solved. All around the pond and the stream there is a mass of tiny froglets and toadlets (which may or may not be a word, but if not it definitely should be). They are absolutely everywhere, pinging about like flies.

Not to be outdone, the insect life has also taken things up a notch. As well as the bees, which seem almost drunk inside the campanula, we have electric blue damselflies darting around the ponds and a few early red admiral butterflies. There is also some serious biting insect at work. I have lovely rings of bites on each of my ankles and judging by the tail swishing, random jumping and scratching post/tree action in the field, the cows are clearly experiencing some of the same insect attention.

The swallows and house martins are making regular passes over the pond and performing advanced aeronautics in the field as they stock up on insects for their chicks. We have three house martin nests in eaves above the the bathroom window. After a day in the garden I tend to soak in the bath until I am prune like, watching the birds come and go. The right hand pane has a single neat but the left hand side has two nests, one in each corner facing each other. When they were building the nests the right hand side birds would sit and peer out at each other and chatter, for all the world like two tenement wifies having a “hing’. ~ now though, the birds bringing the insects back seem completely confused about which nest is theirs. One bird consistently flies up to the right hand nest, peers in then does a U-turn and deposits its insect gifts in the left hand nest. I can’t fathom what is going on there. The right hand pane bird seems much more slick and efficient. Perhaps he is an old hand and the others are first time parents. I shall be keeping an eye on the situation from my vantage point amid the Radox.