Been a bit down, so thought I may as well go down further.
This ditch is near the copse where the poplar is.
I had found holes in the bank before. This time I found thrilling dead wood in the mud.
Yes! A worm was burrowing in the wood.
This reminds me of the dead wood I found in front of the poplar - it's where bees were nesting last summer. The wood is turning into soil.
Anyway, back at the ditch and I found an insect in a state of torpor.
It seems to be bee-hairy, but the wings seemed unusual to me.
The wetter weather has made this ditch more interesting. There's a pond on one side of a sort of narrow track with the ditch at a T-junction alongside the path. Both pond and ditch dry up over the course of the year. They are all man-made - an effort to drain the arable fields.
Yet they must have been here for a few generations so the animals make use of them readily. Birds often scout for insects in the ditch, I flush them up when I walk.The banks are not cut and are full of rosebay willowherb in the summer.
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