A Breakfast Incident

Warm spring sunshine again yesterday morning, and there I was sitting quietly in the front parlour, with my breakfast on my lap - toast and Marmite since you ask - listening to (or enduring) The Archers. Happening to glance out of the window, I caught a sudden flash of bright silver-blue and, in my excitement, leapt to my feet, with the inevitable result that my precarious breakfast went flying. Picture the scene, if you feel like a laugh to start the week... Happily there was no one present at the time to witness it - and anyway the Marmite jar didn't break, and the toast landed butter side up, so no harm done. And it was well worth that leap to the window, for there it was - my first Holly Blue of the year!
 There were to be many more of these gem-like little beauties as I took my morning stroll - this must have been the day of the big first hatching. As I saw my last Holly Blue of last year in November, this was surely the shortest hiatus ever. Peacocks were flying too, and a couple of Commas, a Red Admiral - and my first sightings of Large and Small Whites. This adds up to a good tally for what is still early April...
 The other highlight of the weekend was seeing a red squirrel in a park in Cheam. Of course it was not a Red Squirrel but a Grey Squirrel (or bushy-tailed tree rat) giving a remarkably effective impression of its red cousin. I've come across brownish Grey Squirrels often enough, but this one was a uniform reddish brown - it was practically Tufty, or Squirrel Nutkin. For a moment it had me fooled - if I'd been holding anything, I'd probably have dropped it.