Butterflies and Bees

Sorry that I haven't posted anything much recently. I have been (a) very busy, and (b) not here, as you are about to find out. We, as a family went to a music festival last Thursday until yesterday called WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance). I had a great time and I recommend it to all. We camped in a quiet part of the campsite with wild flowers. There were plenty of bees there and, after much trouble, I managed to take a picture of one. It was still disappointingly rubbish though, so it is not included below. Also, at home there are bees and butterflies. I was more successful in capturing these on my camera.

The bees in our garden are honey bees and are attracted by the marjoram which has purple flowers. The ones I saw at the music festival in Wiltshire were a mix of Honey Bees and various Bumble Bees. The butterflies I have seen are Ringlets, Peacocks and Gatekeepers. Next door, there is a Buddleia bush, which they may be attracted by.

A Honey Bee:

Another Honey Bee (or is it they same one?!)

Peacock Butterfly (It flew into our garden shed and landed on a paint pot breifly):

A Ringlet Butterfly:

Fat is in fashion!

At the moment, our fat balls and blocks are particulary popular with the birds. We have had Long-tailed Tits, Blue Tits, Blackbirds, Starlings, Robins and Magpies. The Long-tailed Tits are very entertaining, and I saw 10 all crowd around the fat ball feeder. I find it quite amusing that they scavenge for the last few crumbs of fat. It is good that they are visiting and I hope they are here to stay! We recently bought a fat block, which had all gone within 2 days, mostly because of the Blackbirds. The strange thing is that, normally, the fat products are more popular in winter, but there are no signs of this at the moment.
The picture below shows what I think is a young blackbird, judging by its unusually light plumage. The females are slightly darker than this.

Very Slow-worms

I went out yesterday, to see if I could possibly get a picture of a slow-worm in the garden. I did eventually manage to get a picture, but I encountered a few problems.

In our garden, near the swing is an unused sandpit. Well, not exactly unused. I lifted the sandpit up to reveal 1 adult and 1 young slow-worm. I was lifting the sandpit up with my left hand, while trying to take a picture with my right hand. This would have been easily managable, but I couldn't get my digital camera to focus properly. Thankfully, the well-named creatures stayed put while I tried to focus my camera and take a few snaps, before they slithered off at a very slow pace.

The first picture is just to show where I found the 2 slow worms. The other 2 are of the adult and young respectively.