Everything but the kitchen sink…

The title is a sure indication of 'loss of theme' syndrome, but I need to catch up on the sheer variety of sightings over the past few days, both at home in the garden and out on the South Downs. So without further prevarication here's something of a very mixed bag.

I'll start with a tent. It's a spider's tent (or nest) and home to many tiny spiderlings. I'm not sure of the species, but will guess at a nursery web spider. The remnants of the egg sac is just visible in the lower part of the tent (a white blob in the centre of the photo).

Another tightly packed colony was equally at home in the garden. These are greenfly, packed on the stem of dandelion.

One more from that sequence, this time the inside of the compost bin, currently also home to a colony of slow worms. This large specimen was curled on the top of the compost when I opened the lid but was slithering away by the time I was ready with the camera.

Meanwhile the hummingbird hawkmoths are out in number. We've had up to three in the garden at once, so I'm getting plenty of opportunities for photographs. This is one of the better ones.

And three more newly emerged darters were by the pond this morning.

Out by the fields a flash of red caught my eye. No, it wasn't a fox. It was a ginger cat, out with a friend.

I'm going to close with a short sequence taken at the local racetrack (where I normally photograph kestrels). It was race day.

Camera note: first five shots taken with the Canon 7D and EF 100mm f/2.8L macro IS USM lens. The rest were taken with the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.