Flying critters

Torrential rain and a few claps of thunder at seven this morning was followed by another day of hot sunshine. Took a short walk along the green lane that abuts our residential road and saw lots of butterflies, beetles, bees, hoverflies and an ichneumonid, some of which are pictured here:

left & right top: ringlets
centre top: comma
bottom left: speckled wood
bottom right: meadow brown
centre bottom: ichneumon wasp

I think the ringlet butterfly (top left) must have had a bite taken out of its wings when they were folded - the missing sections are the same size and shape, poor thing!

Before the summer weather returned, I baked a carrot cake - to a brand new-to-me recipe courtesy of Flossie! It turned out just as nearly as delicious as hers that we enjoyed on our way home last Monday. Thank you, Floss! I also christened our new food processor (now known as my Bosch Mangler) to grate the carrots - finely and coarsely! (See Extra.)