Never rush to tidy up
Little Petal just stopped at the step between the kitchen and the office and said to me "Have you seen this?"
I thought she was referring to the drips of water coming from the cold water pipe ten feet above. There is a leaking pressure-relief valve on the small heater under the sink, and the constant flow of water through the pipes is causing condensation to form on them and drip everywhere.
I got up and moved to the doorway, ready to tell her that if she didn't insist on turning the thermostat for the water up so high it wouldn't be venting quite so much pressure, but what she was pointing to was not the drip point, but close by. A green moth or butterfly had settled on a piece of cardboard left laying on the step after I had packed a customer's order.
Neither of us had ever seen anything like it before. We've emailed off a picture to a web-site that might be able to identify it, but while we wait for them to reply, I thought some of you might like to have a look and share your valuable opinions with us.
After taking a few shots I started to worry about one of us accidentally treading on it, or a cat coming in and having a pounce, so I gently lifted the cardboard up onto the worktop by the sink, and for a couple of seconds stared eye-to-eye with it. It decided it really should be on the move again and fluttered around the kitchen for a few seconds, before settling on the remnants of the old station sign.
Strangely, although this shot was taken from several feet away, I found it to be better than the other shots, most of which were taken at a distance of a few inches with a close-up lens fitted, (the Sopwith Camel found an adaptor ring to allow him to start using his old 35mm equipment with the modern digital camera lens.) So this photo was the one we finally decided to send to the butterfly site.
Oh, and by the way, I have finally managed to get the blogger's spellchecker working, so you'll be spared some of my quirky words from now on. I suppose this is going to put the pedants off who otherwise love to flit around from site to site picking up a misused apostrophe here and an abused tense there. Gomen Nasai.
I thought she was referring to the drips of water coming from the cold water pipe ten feet above. There is a leaking pressure-relief valve on the small heater under the sink, and the constant flow of water through the pipes is causing condensation to form on them and drip everywhere.
I got up and moved to the doorway, ready to tell her that if she didn't insist on turning the thermostat for the water up so high it wouldn't be venting quite so much pressure, but what she was pointing to was not the drip point, but close by. A green moth or butterfly had settled on a piece of cardboard left laying on the step after I had packed a customer's order.
Neither of us had ever seen anything like it before. We've emailed off a picture to a web-site that might be able to identify it, but while we wait for them to reply, I thought some of you might like to have a look and share your valuable opinions with us.
After taking a few shots I started to worry about one of us accidentally treading on it, or a cat coming in and having a pounce, so I gently lifted the cardboard up onto the worktop by the sink, and for a couple of seconds stared eye-to-eye with it. It decided it really should be on the move again and fluttered around the kitchen for a few seconds, before settling on the remnants of the old station sign.
Strangely, although this shot was taken from several feet away, I found it to be better than the other shots, most of which were taken at a distance of a few inches with a close-up lens fitted, (the Sopwith Camel found an adaptor ring to allow him to start using his old 35mm equipment with the modern digital camera lens.) So this photo was the one we finally decided to send to the butterfly site.
Oh, and by the way, I have finally managed to get the blogger's spellchecker working, so you'll be spared some of my quirky words from now on. I suppose this is going to put the pedants off who otherwise love to flit around from site to site picking up a misused apostrophe here and an abused tense there. Gomen Nasai.
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 11:57 am
3 Comments:
No idea what it is, but i loves it. beautiful!
Yes, CB, it's a shame it wouldn't stay for long, but that's butterflies for you, passive-aggressive to the last.
We're puzzling over the colour here, thinking that the subtle shade of green must correspond to the leaves of some tree or plant it lives on, but not having much success. I've looked through a couple of books and realised there are more shades of green than I can keep in my head at once.
My thanks to my ex-geek (or retired geek?) friend from the "on the road again" sidebar link (http://surfbaud.dyndns.org/sites/blog/), for identifying the butterfly as Hemithea aestivaria, full details here http://www.gardensafari.net/english/picpages/hemithea_aestivaria.htm
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