Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Hope you like Swallows!
These are immature Starlings - note the light coloured head.
Swallow perched on our decades old overhead mains wire.
Swallow out collecting insects. They will be leaving soon for a warmer continent and feed intensively before they go.
Often swallows take off en-masse for no reason we can discern. Sometimes most of them come back quite quickly, sometimes most go feeding, and sometimes they just 'go'.
2 Brown Long-eared Bats (see 22 Aug 2005) in a recess of the house. If you can't spot the second it is up and left of the main image against the rafters.
A chance pairing of a slow soaring Buzzard and nimble swallow. Scales must be approximately right for them both to be in reasonable focus
Another instance of swallows taking insects off trees (see 18 Aug 2005) but this time landing on a Hawthorn tree and picking them off.
One or more young foxes continue to visit.
In the pre-dawn gloom swoops of white appeared on an Infra-red security camera. Not the usual moths close to the camera but at least 4 Long eared bats hunting at the front of the house. For 15 minutes breakfast got cold while we took several dozen flash images (mostly of where a bat WAS) but this was the most useful for identification. (Another image in a few days.)
Robin rising out of the frame to avoid an oncoming moorhen.
2 magpies appearing to be doing 'You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours'.
This young fox visited one feeding site, then the other, and back to the first over the course of half an hour just after full darkness. This was the last image of the three. Lots of fruit peelings that night - foxes like fruit.
This image shows a piece of Swallow behaviour we have not seen before. The swallows hovered over this Ash tree top for a second or two beating their wings against the leaves. They then swooped down to collect the insect(s) they dislodged. A number of individuals were doing this from a group of about 100 feeding over the plot for an hour or so.
Adult Swallows can feed their youngster in mid-air in a wonderful show of aerobatics. This is the 'best-so-far' image we have of this event
The rabbit control officer on duty.
The Young Muntjac deer knows where to get a free meal.
Going out to change the camera memory cards, this lovely dawn through the trees made up for the wet feet.
After a few years break skeins of Geese are again flying over the plot.
A Peacock Butterfly yet to encounter bramble thorns, bird pecks and other ravages of life.
This robin took it's picture fleeing from the approach of the monster coming to swop memory cards in the camera and chuck down some corn. During the day robins are now fairly trusting but in the half-light they quite rightly play safe.
Don't know what this young moorhen is doing, but you get a good views of the structure and patterning of the wings.
The Muntjac deer at the front of the house after photographing itself the night before.
The Fawn seems to be a male judging by appearance of antler bumps on the head (actually better seen the next morning at the front of the house when he triggered the movement detector - see tomorrow)
A slight tatty Speckled Wood butterfly on Blackberry.
The underwing of this comma butterfly shows the camouflage view that with both colour and wing edges mimics a dead leaf.
The top view of this comma butterfly shows the display colours. The wonderful scalloped edges are part of its disguise - see tomorrow.
A freshly emerged Peacock butterfly sunning itself on a blackberry leaf.
For the first time we have seen young green woodpeckers here. There are at least two, and this one is standing on top of a Great Tit nestbox mounted on a dead elm. Last year a Great Spotted Woodpecker pair wrecked the box as you can see, but did not use it last year nor this so it's time for replacement.
First sighting of a Small Copper butterfly here, this one rather nicely poised on a buttercup flower.
Image from this date last year - a couple of 'Gatekeeper' (AKA Hedge Brown) Butterflies feeding from Blackberry Nectar.