Creepy Crawlies

Regular readers of these notes will know that, from the very beginning, I have taken great delight in drawing to your attention the things that arrive on the mountain. Be it mammal, insect, fish or fowl. Everything flying thing, from the humble tit to Sparky the Guinea Fowl. Mammals such as chipmunk or indeed the weasel in the freezer. Even the things that haunt the night. You have been spared none of them.

*Aside… and at this point let me reveal that part of the point of this note is to see what Google will pull out of the dark spaces…all will become clearer lower down…already I have laid a subtle trap for the seamier side of the springwatch audience…*

Anyway, where was I. Oh yes. She Of The Town House and I were sitting in the sun beaten haze of summer at our vastly improved pond on Saturday afternoon. All of a sudden a large insect of a type that I hadn’t observed before appeared and buzzed round, alighting on various strands of reed and grass and tormenting my attempts to get a decent photo. On looking it up later I found that it was Libellula Depressa, the Broad-bodied Chaser. There is a rather nicer picture of it here. The one that I took is clumsily enlarged from my phone. This is not a rare beast by any means but it is unusual round here. In the last ten years I have never seen one on my mountain, which is why it took me by surprise. If you happen to live with an insect enthusiast with a special interest in dragon flies ( not so unlikely as it sounds this is all targeted stuff…:-) ) I am curious to know whether they usually come this far up. I am 300m out of the valley below. On Sunday I spotted another one, quite a way from the pond, round the back of the house. I wonder if we have provided just the right habitat, or if indeed the incredibly warm weather that this year seems blessed with is allowing them to explore new heights. So a beautiful insect and very welcome.

Something else has crept out of the woodwork as well. Earlier on in these notes I attempted humorous reference to the fact that the recycling box was over flowing and cocked a mocking snook (Result! Microsoft knows not of the word “snook”. Where else could you get such satisfaction…) at an organ of a foreign power. I am choosing my words carefully here. A couple of you made a point of telling me, tongue in cheek I thought, that perhaps such snook cocking wasn’t a good idea.
I am thus a little disturbed to find that indeed someone’s crawler has indeed made a bee line for that post, and the one before it which referred to restricted weaponry.
This is worrying. I am not, unless severely provoked, any kind of revolutionary. No fisting the air, marching and chanting slogans for me. Well not since “Jobs Not Bombs”. Since the end of the Thatcher years I have been a far more sedentary political cynic. Once she had been seen off, I felt that all that fuss about school milk was finally over.
Oh lord I am going a bit Corbett again. Please stop me when this happens.
Look the thing is this. Just a couple of days after I wrote that, my notes have been thoroughly indexed, including possibly links to you dear reader, by a company that provides electronic and scientific services to HMG. And it took me a little while to track them down. They didn’t actually leave that web address but that’s certainly where it came from!

I am going to have to be careful what I say in future.

At least two "Google Traps" have been laid in this post.
I apologise in advance to anyone who has wound up here looking for the contents Kate Humble's vest. Look elsewhere.
* I wonder if there is such a thing a "Google Trap" or wether I am the coiner of this phrase? *
Thats it... I'm off...