Red Admiral

Sat still warming up in the garden

Peter

Ellingham Mill

One of the two main sluices, a day or two after a rainy day in summer

Peter

Meadow Brown

The Meadow Brown family butterfly which has been around the morning sun strap in the garden for some time, now somewhat the worse for wear, finally sat still for long enough to get a photograph.

Peter

Back to the orchid meadow

Unimproved grassland meadow, lots of Buttercups

Underlaid with orchids

Mostly Early Purple Orchids

Peter

Start of the Bungay Loop

From the launch point

Below the bridge to Earsham Dam

There is a decent launching point

Peter

Macro

The new camera may be perfectly function for what it needs to do, but the macro on the main camera beats it hands down:

Peter

Evening in the garden

The new pocket camera appears quite functional, a few flowers in the garden this evening

Peter

Driving home through Flixton

Flixton Decoy seen from the road home today.

One of the Rhododendrons

The board which maintains water level in Blundesdon lake. It rained overnight, the board was dry yesterday. A sort of mini weir.

Peter

Painted Lady

We grew butterflies, Painted Ladies. This is one on the apple tree just after release.

 

The fine detail of the "boring" side of the wings is beautiful.

We mostly grew them to see if the process would help reduce Hazel's butterfly (and most almost every other flying insect) phobia. Very successful, but they were so much fun we'll get some more anyway...

Peter

The canoe is varnished

Hazel getting ready for a trial in our ancient plywood Canadian canoe.

We went to Homersfield Bridge, paddled around for quarter of an hour, just to see if she liked it. A major success. Now time to try and organise a short river trip...

Peter

Weybread road bridge launch sites

The access point for the canadian canoe at Weybread. Easiest on the north side of the Waveney, LOTS of nettles on the southern side.

You can see the south bank launch platform just above the small rapid over the concrete blocks.

The view downstream from the launch site:

Here is the river once clear of the moving water:

Roaring Arch Bridge drop

The drop at Roaring Arch Bridge just upstream of the Bungay Loop of the Waveney, on a side channel across the common.

Walking to the Waveney on the Bungay Loop

We walked along the top of the woods above the Bungay Loop of the Waveney. This rather handsome dragonfly sat still for long enough to get a picture

We hadn't expected Hazel to walk as far as the descent to the river, but she did!

Nice drifts of rather bleached out Ladies Smock as we crossed the meadow

And playing Pooh sticks on a footbridge over the Waveney.

Getting the children to leave the river and walk back to the car is a perennial problem...

The Ash tree over the bridge makes it look more like winter but is was a lovely spring day. With the ubiquitous Bluebells of course.

Peter

Ladybirds

Ladybirds in the garden

Weybread Mill weirs

After the orchid picnic we drove to Weybread and has a walk along a bit of the Angle Way, mostly me wanting to look at the river but we all had a lovely walkabout.

This is the main weir, the top drop is about two feet and the slope is about another two feet.

An easy enough slide/scrape in any sort of a play boat. This is at pretty low but not quite Summer levels.

Below is the main flow control sluice, about four feet to a flat brick floor. Unlikely to form any sort of user friendly wave as flow increases but you never know...

Orchids

Still very early for orchids but we had a picnic at a patch of unimproved grassland and I managed to find, in a sheltered hollow, the smallest Early Purple Orchid I have ever seen.

A slightly larger companion was about a foot away, they were the only two orchids in the whole reserve, at least around the edges were I walked.

Cowslips were common but mostly very stunted, this was again from a sheltered spot.

Bluebell by the picnic blanket

Haddiscoe woodland Bluebells

In Haddiscoe the Bluebells are just coming out. Another week and a sunny day and they will make a lovely picture.

Pretty Yellow Archangel by the footpath:

And a white Comfrey, just starting to go over:

Primroses on the A145

From a few weeks ago, primroses by the Beccles road

Garden Violets

Violets in the garden still growing well under the Sycamore.

Misty morning

Early morning mist at ground level. To my eye it was grey with a grey silhouette of the tree, remarkably blue on the photograph...