A good mother...

Yesterday was grey and photographically uninspiring, busy domestically and I felt a bit below par, so the camera stayed in its bag. Today was also grey, but I felt much better, well enough to do a bit of gardening in preparation for planting some half-price ornamental Allium bulbs that arrived yesterday in the post.

Around lunchtime Pete and I went for a walk round Holme Fen, though the light levels were so low that we felt a torch would have been handy. There was no wind and it wasn't really cold, but by the end of our walks a fine, unrelenting mizzle had set in. I was determined to taks some photographs as, rather unusually, I'd lugged my tripod along but the gold of the birches appeared faded in the dull light, most of the interesting fungi had disappeared and I could have done with a flash for the mosses .

As we crossed a bridge over one of the ditches Pete spotted this Parent Bug Elasmucha grisea, looking for a place to hibernate. This shield-bug is closely associated with Silver Birch and looks very much like the Birch Shield Bug Elasmostethus interstinctus at first glance. But closer examination of the flanks shows that where the Birch Shield Bug is pale green, the Parent Bug is banded with black and cream. The real difference, however, can be seen in their behaviour. Whilst the other shield bugs lay their eggs and then leave their young to fend for themselves, the Parent Bug is a dedicated mother. She lays her eggs in a tight cluster on the underside of a Birch leaf, and then she broods her clutch, sitting protectively over the eggs until they hatch. She stays with her family until the young finally become adults. There's an excellent blog post about this here.

I spent the rest of the afternoon editing and labelling photographs and trying out the Nik Efex suite of programmes that I downloaded for a trial period. I was surprised and delighted when my mobile rang and it was Chris calling from India. He and Lizzy are both well and have had a fantastic time touring round Rajasthan, but have now decided that after visiting Agra and Mumbai they're going to spend Christmas in Thailand, and then go from there to various other countries in south-east Asia.So we may have them home a couple of months earlier than anticipated!!