Wildlife on the lime

There was some curious wildlife on the lime tree today. The caterpillars just love it for some reason!

This one I'm assuming is a Swallowtail Butterfly Caterpillar. I may sound knowledgeable, but when I searched on Wikipedia for a caterpillar that looked like a bird dropping, that is what I found. Swallowtail sounds much nicer...

A groovy, spiky one. Imagine it's in focus.

Funny how the caterpillars stayed still for me to photograph, but were out of focus, but this bee was busy buzzing around and yet is in perfect focus....

Puzzles

I finally got around to taking a photo of Chicken no.1's first 500 piece puzzle the other day. If it was me I would have sighed in relief and possibly framed it so I didn't have to do it again. But not her. Nope. Carefully sorted it by colour and packed it away again till the 'next time'.

Now she's just about finished the 1000 piece puzzle. Audio book + puzzle/Lego = happy chicken!

Our boy? Different story. Frequently to be found trying to climb to the roof or on the tank, or wildly chasing the dog around with a stick. But then sitting quietly the next minute with an absorbing book about cars or insects.

Littlest chicken has been finding her voice lately (generally over the top of the others...). She used to quietly potter around (chasing beetles/having tea parties/flooding the bathroom/testing her pain tolerance), but these days she has lots of stories to tell.