Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
This joyous little creature flew for us 4 times at various distances and lighting. Here are a couple of the best images we got. This is the bird that normally hovers like a speck in the sky - we were lucky to get this one hovering low down.
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Skylarks seem to spend some their time in flight with wings closed. Do wish we could include the liquid song, but even if we recorded it the noise from the camera would drown it out.
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The Great spotted woodpecker chick likes our peanut feeders and unfortunately also the wooden post it hangs from! Here it is with Mother and then on its own. Have not seen 'Dad' lately - may be sad, or maybe feeding elsewhere with another chick.
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Baby Bluetits are so sweet. They have quickly learned 'peanut feeder technique'.
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Have been trying for ages to get a photo of a Green Woodpecker in flight and finally got lucky. Green woodpeckers go in for 'bounding flight' - flap like mad and then streamline and glide/ballistic to save wind resistance.
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The surrounding fields have not been cut, and there is lovely show of purplish grass heads, buttercups, and in the overgrown hedges, elderberry flowers.
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Not much by way of acrobatics from the fieldmice (wood mice) recently, but still sweet. We plan to move this camera 10-15m soon (the current site is badly eroded and in a water run-off) and do hope they follow).
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Swifts and swallows are making intermittent appearances.
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The moorhen are trying again after the fox scoffed the first lot of eggs.
Not sure they have chosen a better place but hope so.
Late News: By chance 16 days after this image was taken it turns out to
have been a good place - a chick being fed on the water.
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Out at 07:40 watching for larks, kestrel or anything else heard a distant cuckoo call and saw a distant atypical bird flying in our general direction. Beats the usual cuckoo call right over your head as a sort of 'missed me'.
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Two very different birds on 2 very different wires. These pigeons on the high voltage cables just took our fancy - not the usual 'one-peck-apart'.
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Goldfinches have not 'disappeared' for the summer this year and this one was sitting on the overhead phone wires looking beautiful.
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Fledgelings everywhere are 'begging' food from their parents. On a gloomy afternoon through the kitchen window we watched the Great Spotted Woodpecker chick on the left is being fed by Mum. Next day he had fathomed out the feeder for him/her self.
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A couple of days earlier a magpie chick more 'demanded' to be fed in several images over about 30 minutes.
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The male pheasant strides through the buttercups in the adjacent field making a ridiculously colourful pairing.
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Anything not mown is beginning to be carpeted by buttercups or these oxeye daisies.
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It's sad that planes litter the sky with trails and infuriating when low ones drown out the birds and conversation, but this seemed like too capricious a moment to miss.
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We don't see Hares here anymore, so we have to 'make do' with a fieldmouse (wood mouse) gazing at the moon (well it might have been if it hadn't set already!)
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Damselflies are sort of miniature dragonflies, & just as alien.
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This is two pairs of Azure damselflies laying eggs in 'Duck' pond among the miniature water lilies and duckweed. The female on the right has her ovipositor under the water.
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The Moth trap (see yesterday) also caught a Elephant Hawk-moth with its incredible shocking pink colouration
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7 years ago (24 June 2001) we photographed the same species in flight using a electronically triggered camera and flash. Its a genuine single image of a rather tatty individual, though the 'sky' was a painted backboard.
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An overnight run of the moth trap (a bright mercury vapour lamp to attract moths who spend the night safely below in old egg cartons) caught about 200 moths of 30 species. These Poplar Hawk-moths have a body length of about 4cm. We happened to catch two and couldn't resist showing them together - they look different because their underwings are differently positioned.
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Detail of the head and antennae.
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Bluetits are now being fed as fledgelings (left the nest) and others still in the box (possibly from different boxes - at least 4 have bluetits in them).
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Youngster on the left, wings aflutter - FEED ME! FEED ME! FEED ME!
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Bit of behaviour we have not noticed before - male chaffinches pestering a perched kestrel until it moves on.
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Here it is flying to the next perch along where another male chaffinch almost immediately arrived to harass it.
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For an hour or so the Bluetit nest box in the back garden was well enough lit for some images. Here one of the chicks has clambered up to the hole to grab the incoming morsel.
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The parents were arriving so often they had to queue up a few times. Here one leaves over the head of the other waiting to go in.
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This is a montage of a single skylark ascending, images a second or two apart. This is the first time we remember getting a skylark image that is more than a speck in the sky.
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Male Kestrel Hovering in the breeze.
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We wouldn't normally try to photograph birds in flight in poor light and even worse when raining. But about 6 were hunting through the trees to our North only a few metres off the ground and less then 10m from the house. So through an open window we had a go until the rain got so hard it was too much even for the swallows. This one seemed to catch the moment
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Not sure what the bird being threatened was, but the female yellowhammer seems to have won the day.
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A picture of a male yellowhammer about 20 minutes later, positively glowing yellow.
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On a grander scale to yesterdays Blackbird and grub, a heron took a few newts from the duck-shaped pond - this one at least being the protected 'Great Crested' newt (which is the dominant species on our patch).
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Blackbirds all over the plot are feeding youngsters. At 7:30 a.m. this male has found a grub for one of his.
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Wet weather brings out the slugs. Looks like the mouse on the right has an obstacle course to run. The mouse just left of centre is behind the log.
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This pair of collared doves seem to have commandeered the 'raptor post' and spend much of the day there in contentment and affectionate mutual preening.
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After a year of planning, stone acquisition and foundation laying, the RSPB Phoenix youth group descended on our little world to build a short length of drystone wall as a suntrap to attract lizards & snakes (and who knows what else).
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Work in progress. Less than half the people who turned up are in this picture
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The finished item - now we wait and see what likes it. Many thanks to all concerned.
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The Bluetits in the box on the dead elm post are feeding chicks. Both parents feed the young for 15 to 23 days (book info) taking in a grub, caterpillar or adult insect every few minutes. Phew! The insects now are noticeably larger than shown on 30 May 2008 taken a week before.
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This is an orange-tip butterfly - the female has no orange tip but the beautiful green and white mottled underwing is the giveaway. Haven't seen a male for a week or two.
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Wet - Wet - Wet. The fungi are popping up in the grass and more interestingly on a log in a partly overgrown woodpile. Is this one 'fungus' (a single mycelium) or a number of 'fungi' fruiting bodies.
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