April Brings the Sweet Spring Showers...On and On for Hours and Hours.

Never have these couple of lines from the Flanders and Swann 'Song of the Weather'  a parody of the 1841 poem by Sara Coleridge, 'January Brings the Snow' been more apt than this April. Will this showery weather ever change? I see it's set to continue into May. Still, as promised in my previous post here's a few bits and pieces I've found in between the showers over the last few days. In my garden and along the beach to the east of Axmouth Harbour. Firstly though, the whole of the 'Song of the Weather' lyrics which sum up a typical British year weather-wise. I like July best.

 A Song of the Weather

January brings the snow,
Makes your feet and fingers glow.

February's ice and sleet
Freeze the toes tight off your feet.

Welcome March with wintry wind
Would thou wert not so unkind!

April brings the sweet spring showers,
On and on for hours and hours.

Farmers fear unkindly May
Frost by night and hail by day.

June just rains and never stops
Thirty days and spoils the crops.

In July the sun is hot.
Is it shining? No, it's not.

August, cold and dank and wet,
Brings more rain than any yet.

Bleak September's mist and mud
Is enough to chill the blood.

Then October adds a gale,
Wind and slush and rain and hail.

Dark November brings the fog
Should not do it to a dog.

Freezing wet December, then
Bloody January again!

In The Garden.

One of the nicer things about the showery weather is the frequency of pretty rainbows to look at, this one as viewed from my 'staring window'

This diminutive plant caught my eye. Not one I'd noticed before although it's quite common
apparently. It looks like a miniature forget-me-not but its actually called Common Corn Salad - Valerianella locusta. Once I'd spotted it in the garden I'm starting to see it all over the place.

The ubiquitous Speckled Wood.

Holly Blue

I wasn't sure if this was a bee, a wasp or even a sawfly until I saw the same insect featured on Rob's blog 'The Living Isle'   It is in fact a Cuckoo Bee Nomada gooderiiana which lays its eggs in the nest of Andrena mining bees.

Along the Beach at Axmouth Today.

The rain clouds were taking a bit longer to build up today, so late morning I took the opportunity to stroll along the beach to the east of Axmouth Harbour hoping to see a few butterflies. I saw three species thus:

Dingy Skipper

Small Copper and...

Green Hairstreak.
  This one soon to be sharing a Sallow flower with a Andrena flavipes, the bee of the furry yellow legs.

This one, which was rather keen to climb onto my finger when the sun went in has got the biggest 'tails' that I've ever seen on this species.

Some Beetles

These green Leaf Beetles are Gastrophysa viridula

I think this Rove Beetle is Necrodes littoralis

Green Tiger Beetle.

A jet black bee, as yet unidentified.

This wasp was huge, most probably a queen. It's a German Wasp Vespula germanica. which is a new species for me, not uncommon though I just haven't been taking enough notice of them.

This stunning caterpillar is the larva of the Scarlet Tiger Moth.

All too soon this happened again! I got very wet and went home...