Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
This sweet little feather duster is a young Yellowhammer seen where it's parents come and feed every day.
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Not seeing so many mice at the moment. This one seems to have found some small piece of peanut (?) and is nibbling away.
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Plant galls fascinate us. They are formed by insect parasites, often eggs laid inside the plant which reacts to form a cavity to the insect lavas liking. Eventually the insect bores its way out. In the winter you find the woody galls with the exit holes visible.
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The book describes Buzzard underwings as 'Variable', almost white to almost black. Have both in one go ...
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Earlier in the day we were surprised to see a buzzard carrying a whole rabbit. The next surprise is that it didn't set off with it. Instead it flew a few 100m over to a known morning 'thermal' and despite the load circled without flapping and eventually disappeared as a speck in the haze. We imagine it was transporting it back a hungry brood some way away. A few days later without the thermal we saw a smaller load being carried off toward the M1 Motorway.
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Kestrels (the birds often seen hovering over motorways) are wonderful to watch whether hovering or not.
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After years of 'absence' a Little Owl (actual common name of species) landed on a spoil heap of prospective stone quarrying going on in the just cut meadow. This little fellow is fully grown & is about the same size as a Starling. He is about 60m away and just sat there for hours with his head turning at least every half minute. Our presence seems to bother him/her not one jot.
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The heron visited the 'duck' pond and ate at least 3 Great Crested Newts while we were watching. Considering that we only know he is there by chance we wonder just how many newts he finds - and its been going on for years. They must breed well here to survive this level of predation.
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Ahhh. Its too small for a mature adult Muntjac deer so think it must be this years fawn growing up nicely. We see a lot of Muntjac droppings but haven't seen the nervous deer themselves for months.
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We think this is a pair of young Chaffinches involved in a typical sibbling squabble.
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After a day of rain an early bright period saw a lot of corvids out looking over waterlogged soil for breakfast. This rook silhouette with beak and eye rather appealed to us.
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Jackdaws are powerful flyers and this moment seemed to capture some of it.
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The 5 moorhen chicks are two with the female and 3 with this male. They just lined up nicely for a moment in the pic.
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The lapwing and heron flew over the middle of our patch 5 minutes apart, and these were taken from just outside the back of the house. Lapwings are not often seen here, Herons are.
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Chance juxtaposition. They basically ignored each other. We weren't going to include this one on this site, but got a request from one of our e-mail group for the original to print and frame, so it obviously has appeal!
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The other end of the original is a yellowhammer disappearing out of frame at the right edge of the frame. Don't know whether the chaffinch was seeing off the yellowhammer, or something disturbed them both.
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A sweet young robin just starting to get it's red feathers.
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Magpie feeding its 'chick' if you can call that voracious creature a chick. This is nothing wrong with the eye - just a protective membrane probably like us closing our eyes when potential injury is near.
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All 5 of our moorhen chicks are doing fine with the parents finding plenty of food for them.
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The kestrels are not having it their own way. Rooks often seem to harass kestrels - here is an example of a kestrel being seen off.
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Nice image of kestrel.
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All those mouse holes with nothing to disguise them makes easy-feeding for the kestrel.
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The hole near this photo kit is in long grass on our side of the fence so we expect most of them to survive.
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Also interested in the half-baled field were masses (we guess 200) of mostly rooks turning over the grass for morsels.
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We assumed it was the end of seeing skylarks over the field but no - he was back to full enthusiasm. He is further away now but still a delight. They have had time for one brood & will hopefully now manage another.
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The fields to North and East have been cut and baled. This is of great interest to opportunists like the kestrel. First he followed the machines to catch anything that was forced from cover.
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Next morning the kestrel hunted from the tops of the bales - here he is pouncing on some unfortunate rodent (one of many in a sequence we hope to produce when time permits).
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2 Days of the Peacocks! 6 peacocks (birds not butterflies!) wandered in from track and stayed for a few hours, elegantly draped over oil tanks, shed tops etc. They came from the hotel 800m from us now under new management - they inherited 11 birds but consider them a nuisance. Next day just 2 males visited, and for the following days none.
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Just practicing ready for when his tail has more than 2 'eyes'
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Here is a first - the pheasants mating at site 2 (their favourite haunt). Here he is 'treading' the 'blonde' female. 10 minutes before he was apparently making overtures to the 'brunet' female at the same site - naughty boy!
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The moorhens have successfully produced 5 chicks from the nest feared would be predated again. Here is the first being fed.
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The shimmering back of a swallow flying over a meadow of uncut grasses & buttercups.
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A surprisingly pristine female Great spotted woodpecker on the peanut feeder crossbar. The youngster has learned how to use the feeders, saving her a lot of work.
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The Emperor Dragonfly is big with 10cm wingspan and absolutely beautiful intricate body and wings.
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Soak in the detail - on the original you can see the segments of the compound eye.
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This is the first dragonfly we have seen here, with beautiful powder blue (and powdery texture) abdomen. It has a wingspan of about 7cm.
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Expect we have seen them before, but this is the first image of a Stock dove we have thought good enough to keep.
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Skylarks descend much faster than they rise. Sometimes they come down in a chaotic flurry of legs and feather, at other times under more control as this montage shows. The birds spacings are fairly accurate (based on positions against the same clouds in different shots) taken at about 7 frames per Second.
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First time we have a decent image of a bullfinch, even if taken through a window. This is a male - there were two males stripping the flowerheads.
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This is a House Martin in flight, the least frequent of our three flycatchers which includes Swallows and Swifts.
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The male Kestrel had a leg injury and was struggling a bit, but now seems to be back to his old health.
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