basil,toad, sparrow hawk

Click and rub the screen over the picture lightly with your finger. If you can smell the basil, I can probably regard it as a satisfactory photograph.

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I empty a bag of composty stuff called soil improver into a plastic bucket. I begin to add the compost to a flower bed when I notice that it is moving. A toad emerges and we exchange looks of mutual suspicion. I go to fetch my camera and the toad poses for me before hopping off.

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High above Mount Sion, this afternoon, the sparrow hawk whose territory this is (it has been widely reported in this blog and elsewhere), is calmly floating in circles on a thermal but presumably keeping an eye open for some small bird or mammal on which to drop from the sky and capture. Toads beware.