More Creature Comforts

In June of last year I blogged a post called "Creature Comforts" with lots of pictures of all the creatures that seemed to be making their homes in my garden. Well it seems that it's happening again. Suddenly the weather is warming up and all the creatures are coming, perhaps literally, out of the woodwork.

A few days ago, while I was doing a spot of tidying upstairs, one of my children shouted through from his bedroom, "Daddy, what's that?"

"What's what?"

"This," he said, pointing through the glass of the closed french window out on to the balcony of his bedroom towards a creature, insect-like, and about 3 inches in length.

"Hmm. A cricket? A grasshopper? I dunno. Maybe a locust? But wow eh?"

"Is it dead?"

I had to laugh. Three year olds, eh? The conversation then progressed a little as the older children entered the room to see the creature. There were many questions, virtually none of them easy to answer. Did it fly? What was the skin made from? What were the sticky-out bits on it's legs? I managed to take a couple of pictures of the creature before it flew away. (Well, at least that answered one of the questions!) A few days later I saw another one of them in the garden. I took out my phone and, because there wasn't a sheet of glass between it and me, I managed to manoeuvre myself around a little and get some pictures from different angles.

Spring has sprung at work too, and the story is the same. All day long I can hear the croaking of the frogs that live in the pond beneath my window. No, not just croaking. Doing the springtime business. You know. Wossname. Procreating. What is more, if I sit in the far corner of my room, away from the window, the acoustics amplify the croaking sound quite considerably. And quite honestly, when the frogs are, ahem, getting amorous, they make quite enough noise, thank you very much. I've been out into the garden below and tried taking photographs, but it's difficult to get close enough to the frogs without them hopping of their lily pads and swimming away.

Now that we're heading towards the end of April, I'm sure it won't be long before all those other creatures mentioned in last summers post all return to grace my humble garden once again, including perhaps this grasshopper's (if that is indeed what it is) little green children! Perhaps, just maybe, this beastie is the same little green beastie that I took pictures of last year?