Apparently there’s a name for almost everything and I guess I really should know them all but lepidopterist surprised me recently.
It turns out to mean butterfly fancier, or hunter or collector or something and should never be confused with leprechaun, the word that appears next in my copy of the Collins Dictionary.
The word featured in an article about the swarms of butterflies, or lepidopterans (which my computer’s spell check wants to change to lepidopteron), that no longer, er……, swarm over the British countryside.
Thinking about this I realised that although this was in the NEWSpaper it was hardly NEWS - fifty years ago I don’t exactly remember fighting my way through anything more than the occasional flutter.
Still it prompted me to do a small unscientific survey of my own and I counted the butterflies I met on a drive down the two-kilometre track that leads to the house.
Unscientific in many ways but principally because I chose today, a blistering hot, sunny, flower filled spring May day and not last week’s swampy when-is-this-rain-going-to-ease, stay inside and not count butterflies day.
46. (81 on an unscientific follow up May 22) (64 just before a storm beginning of june) (june 17 92 on a walk up, 94 on the walk back - early evening) (99 and five dragon flies on a very hot day beginning july)
I didn’t spot any leprechauns and in fact the closest I have ever come to doing that was a long long time ago in Ireland when I stopped at a small farmhouse and asked permission to camp for the night.
One of the nicest, gentlest, twinkliest giants I have ever met emerged from the deep interior of another age and said yes.
In the morning he appeared in the silvery dew, alongside the foxgloves and asked if I had had any trouble from the fairies. It was clearly the first time he had dared to enter their field, and was using me, as a shield should they choose to turn him into a toad.
His reverence confirmed that whatever had jumped onto my tent at midnight should not be scoffed at.
Anyhow, time for a quiz – the first I believe in these pages. A prize for the first correct answer in the comments.
What are;
1. Deipnophobia?
2. Selenophobia?
3. Porphyrophobia?
4. Eisoptrophobia?
Here's a clue – none of them is fear of butterflies and none of them is fear of Leprechauns.
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2 comments:
In answer to your question, click on customize, then layout, then page elements. Then you have the opportunity to click on any page element and edit it. Click on the Title bar. It gives you the option to upload a picture behind your Title text. Hope this helps.
Cheers!
Thanks Traci, it seems that you can also drag the code around in the new post interface.
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