School holidays - 1

Ah yes, the school holidays are well and truly upon us, and with them comes the inevitable tension between working and doing more interesting things during the day! As I work mostly from home, that tension is sometimes very "in-your-face" and so I can look forward to six weeks of circus-time - balancing acts, juggling, hopefully a bit of time to clown around, and some animals thrown in for good measure.
Yesterday afternoon, I decided to take the boys to one of our local-ish spots by the River Lark, on a patch of typical Breckland. They took their nets and sandals and were soon up to their knees wading about catching tiddlers and not much else. The Hemp Agrimony growing by the river was attracting a few butterflies and some large flies, which I believe are Mid Day Flies . These are quite striking flies, and are much larger than your common bluebottles: . They are larger than most bee flies, but do resemble a large bee, with their black bodies. Their faces make them look as though they are on their way to a masked ball, with those big, black eyes contrasting against the rest of their yellowish head. I hadn't heard of them before today, when I happened to see a photo of another one in the Gallery - must be the time for them, methinks.
As tea time beckoned, I decided we should head back to the car, and so the bucket was duly emptied and the soggy nets and drying limbs made their way back. Heavy dark clouds were gathering in the western sky as we drove back across the heath track, slowing to watch a kestrel fly, first from post to post, and then off to land on a raised lump of ground. As we drove on a lone stone curlew flew past, before coming to ground back where we had been. We reversed to see if we could spot the bird, but to no avail. We were rewarded though with a splendid male stonechat, who sat just below the top of a nearby gorse bush. The photo really doesn't do him justice I would love to have the Canon 400mm f5.6 lens, but for now am making do with a Sigma 80-400 OS. As the stonechat decided that he had had enough of that particular gorse bush we decided that we too should head off. As we drove once more along the track I spotted a brown object on the heath that looked like it could be a bird. Always worth looking at, strange brown birds, and this one was certainly worth it . As we looked we spotted another one, then another and then another. The boys didn't even need binoculars to spot them, once they got their eye in, and then they took off - not four, but eight stone curlews, calling as they wheeled around before beginning to alight again. We decided we really should make tracks now, and even beat the rain home.