Munch Bunch Lunch aka "Synchronised Snacking'

Whatever about flogging a dead horse! What about six dead Birch Fly Larvae? I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, so I'd better not look six gift caterpillars in the mandibles...

Irish Times Amateur Photographer of the Year 2012 Nature Prize Winner

Nature:

1st Synchronised Snacking by Des Cannon

2nd Sparring Egrets by Kieran Phelan

3rd Food For A Long Journey by Norma Gleeson

I am delighted to report that I have been invited to exhibit this image at the upcoming "One Hundred Wonders of The World" Exhibition at the Art Center Gallery of Alternative Art in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, from December the 12th 2012.

New Scientist Magazine Online 2010

RTE Evening News 18.8.09

Rush Hour at the Salad Bar

www.telegraph.co.uk item on my 'Dancing Caterpillars'

Madama Butterfly

Explore # 8 on Sunday, August 2, 2009

Ps.The Saying: "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

Meaning: Don't be ungrateful when you receive a gift.

Origin: Proverbs are 'short and expressive sayings, in common use, which are recognized as conveying some accepted truth or useful advice'. This example, also often expressed as 'never look a gift horse in the mouth', is as pertinent today as it ever was.

As horses develop they grow more teeth and their existing teeth begin to change shape and project further forward. Determining a horse's age from its teeth is a specialist task, but it can be done. This incidentally is also the source of another teeth/age related phrase - long in the tooth.

The advice given in the 'don't look...' proverb is: when receiving a gift be grateful for what it is; don't imply you wished for more by assessing its value.

As with most proverbs the origin is ancient and unknown. We have some clues with this one however. The phrase appears in print in English in 1546, as "don't look a given horse in the mouth", in John Heywood's A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue, where he gives it as:

"No man ought to looke a geuen hors in the mouth."

It is probable that Heywood obtained the phrase from a Latin text of St. Jerome, The Letter to the Ephesians, circa AD 400, which conatins the text 'Noli equi dentes inspicere donati' (Never inspect the teeth of a given horse). Where St Jerome got it from we aren't eve likely to know.

Alternate Version - "Don't look six gift invertebrates in the mandibles."

Also - I am not so much flogging a dead horse as I am flogging six dead Birch Fly Larvae.