Cuckoo...cuckoo

Bob heard his first cuckoo of the year yesterday up by Mockbeggar Lake and today I heard my first one calling from the other side of the Ivy Pond as I wandered down to open up Ivy South Hide this morning - the timing could not have been more perfect as only 15 minutes before I had been admiring the Lady's smock in the meadow by Ivy North Hide pictured above. And what is another name for this lovely spring flower of wetland edges - cuckoo flower, due to its flowering coinciding with the arrival of the cuckoo! As I said, perfect. I actually heard the cuckoo while taking another picture, this time of a fine bright yellow slime mold on a log forming part of the dead hedge edging the pond - I know Bob has blogged a few recently, but they are amazing things and I did not want to be outdone! Reed, garden warbler and blackcaps are both very prominent today - both visibly and vocally. Moths were surprisingly thin on the ground in the trap, but a few lunar marbled brown and the great prominent pictured were nice to see. Other than that I thought I'd take the plunge and try out the aquatic capabilities of the new(ish) centre camera, donated by Castle Camera's of Bournemouth and Salisbury earlier in the year. I was hoping to snap a newt, but although they were performing on the web cam all day they were not in range of me when I went to look, but desperate to photograph something took this unusual fish eye view of a pond snail crawling along underneath the meniscus of the pond surface, which isn't great, but quite pleasing none the less!

And having taken it and dried it out before opening it up to download the pictures I am pleased to report that true to the manual, the camera does still work!