Tuesday

Woke up this morning to rain and grey skies again, sigh. However, it did brighten up and become sunny later, but a cold northerly wind. At 12 pm in my front porch, which only gets the sun late in the afternoon, my thermometer (which is accurate) read 54f/12c. Very summery eh?

Anyway, went to Pat's for a lovely lunch, and we walked the dogs up the lane, it would have been too muddy to go to the woodlands, and the little grasshopper (or maybe it's a cricket?) leapt out in front of my feet. It was quite tame, and allowed me to take some really close snaps, it was on the verge of coming onto my hand when Emma came to investigate, and with that, it leapt off back into the grass verge, which was where I wanted to put it anyway, in case a car came.

Across the road from Pat's house, lots of House Martins were collecting mud and dipping it in the puddles and flying off to the house next door building nests. Poor things, I think it's too late for them to be doing that, just shows how bad the weather has been. Any youngsters they have now won't have a lot of chance of making the journey back to Africa I don't think, unless we do have an Indian Summer, and they can stay late into October. There were also some House Sparrows playing "chicken" dustbathing in the middle of the road!