Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Really sensitive animals detect even the dim red glow or barely human audible click of the IR filter in these Scoutguard SG500 self-contained day/night cameras. We set them to take 3 successive stills 1 or 2 seconds apart, and this is the third of a set of three as the fox was 1: oblivious, 2: turned, and 3: glared!
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At another camera we see a Roe deer for only the second time (see also 12 May 2010) identified for us by the guy who sold us our second camera at specialist site http://www.digitalwildcams.co.uk
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This might be a 'common' bee-fly (one of 12 or 15 species according to which book you look in but neither has any detail) now seen here in Spring for the last 3 years. This year we got the 'Flight Tunnel' out of its winter hibernation early and made this one one of the subjects.
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Gotcha! (subsequent frames not included here showed he caught a newt)
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One sort of assumed that a heron's beak is something like a simple hinge. But these two frames show lots of articulation.
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A nicely groomed badger with unusually good view of the top and bottom of a badger's front feet in a single moment.
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A few buzzards identified a thermal that included these 2 not so immediately identified birds climbing with them. Turns out they were a 'pair' of Merlins. The female on the left is said to be bigger than the male on the right, but they were also climbing in the thermal and taken about 1 minute apart, so don't take the relative sizes literally.
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A heron down to some serious newt hunting. What a huge bird for such tiny helpless prey wrapped round the end of it's beak.
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Journalists love finding 'unfortunate' pictures of 'notables' caught in awkward poses. Well this heron walking to our left with one leg in the air, looking our way & decorated with daffodils shows you can make even this hunter look a bit daft!
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The tits, chaffinches and goldfinches are making merry with the
buds and flowers. Here a Bluetit is feeding from the front of a
cherry flower with a yellow pollen stain on the feathers to prove it.
We are also finding the bitten off flowers previous seen as a
result of Great tit activity. Do we have something interesting
here - Bluetits feed in the top of the flowers and Great tits
bite off the undeveloped fruit base?
For the great tit images see images for 21 May 2008.
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We can't even begin to imagine where this mouse is coming from or going to - there isn't even discernable movement blur to help ! Its right at the left edge of the frame with the log just to the right. The shadow at bottom right belongs to the mouse.
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A pair of Robins are nest building in a miniature conifer very close to the house. We wouldn't be able to get nearer the nest without disturbing them, but can view their comings and goings obliquely through a window. Here is an accurate montage of some nesting material being delivered.
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Standing in the garden with some visitors this robin came for an offering of corn but it spotted a huge worm and couldn't resist this much more exciting prospect. It proceeded to bite the worm in two. The front half exited at speed, but the back half was neatly snipped into at least two pieces by the robin and promptly swallowed. And all while all 4 of us stood perhaps 2 metres away dumbfounded.
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Roy's favourite butterfly put in the first appearance of the year on what here is it's favourite flower - the Cuckoo flower, also called Lady's Smock (Cuckoo Flower)
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Our dark pheasant male regularly dust baths in what is notionally the salad bed. Here he has piled soil on his back as part of the proceedings.
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From a different viewpoint 6 days on, the end of the procedure - a cloud of dust and flying soil as he shakes himself out.
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2 tree sparrows having a serious dispute with another watching. We can't help assuming 2 males and a female.
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Ouch!
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Mother mallard duck and her 11 ducklings (1 of which was the traditional tail-end charlie nearly always out of shot) visited 3 of the ponds in one day before vanishing - the moorhens attempt and usually succeed in chasing duck families away.
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Thursday 15 Apr 2010 afternoon & the whole weekend were weirdly clear
without a trace of the usual plethora of contrails following the banning
of commercial airline flights in parts of Europe when a volcano
in Iceland started throwing ash into the higher atmosphere.
The total lack of cloud will have contributed to an atypically low
temperature of -1C early Saturday with a ground frost.
Here is a closed up and limp dandelion 'nicely' frosted
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Sunsets, and in this case Sunrise, were also unusually hazy - this one viewed over a local farm.
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Not much doubt who won this encounter!
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We often see tits on catkins and assume this one has got in a lovely mess with pollen over his face.
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These two shots (each pair a genuine single frame) taken as successive frames about 3 minutes apart really caught our fancy.
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A little portrait and a mystery solved.
In the entry for 17 May 2009 (image taken 23 Apr 2009) we reported
on a long-tailed tit defending his territory from his reflection
in the window. He is at it again this year but now we know he has
a nest in the hedge right outside. Maybe it is there year after
year?
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And here a grabbed shot of the nest with the entrance hole on the opposite side to the window. The sphere of soft mossy materials is about 10cm diameter so the bird must curl into a ball to fit inside. You can just see a feather of the bird inside which was not disturbed by this momentary stop along the path.
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A late identification of this as a Roe deer in Infra-red light confirms this as our first siting of this species. Previously the only deer where the minute Muntjc deer. This is the third of 3 images taken over a few seconds - the dim red light of the IR illuminator seems to have attracted the attention of the deer which is now staring at the camera.
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The herons are still going after the newts and several make occasional visits over our patch, but do a flyover if we are already outside. Always trying for that unusual image, this flyover produced an unusual shadow of the heron's head on its own under-wing, complete with light spot when the sun is shining through the nostril holes in the beak (no fiddling - genuine single frame just exposure corrected & cropped).
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Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) and Field Vole in similar position just 8 minutes apart. Note the very different lengths of the tails.
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We never see swans in our patch (not safe for takeoff) but in the last couple of days a couple have been feeding on the sprouting 'whatever' in an arable field to our north undoubtedly to the farmer's annoyance. Here we caught their arrival 'on the wing' though this time they landed out of our sight.
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We had always thought this shiny ceramic top of the large peanut feeder would not attract a bird of any size - corvids don't land on it. Checking the CCTV camera we found it had landed on the feeder, stayed 4 minutes and then flew off and did so again a few days later.
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A genuine single frame of a pair of robins.
At other times or year they would be fighting like the proverbial
'cats and dogs' but nature calls a romantic truce for Spring!
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And 100m away an undoubtedly different bird posed in the sunshine for a portrait.
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At last - a creature that WANTS lumps of dried up carrot! That's quite a big load for a little vole.
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One of last years frozen cherries stripped to the stone which the mouse enjoy opening for the kernel.
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Missed a bit!
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We have no idea how many Newts we have in this pond, but it must be hundreds to stand the annual predation by herons. In 6 minutes this one heron took at least 3 and we don't know how long he had been there before we noticed it. It worked along the back edge right to left as viewed here dispatching newts with obvious skill.
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An unfortunately good view of one of the newts being despatched.
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Wheee!
A Chaffinch 'skydiving' near the ground with primary feather tips
shadowed on the log.
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3 Little tree sparrows queuing in an orderly fashion for the nut feeder. The one on the left is just taking off towards the food. These are NOT the ordinary (but declining) house sparrow but the rarer tree sparrow with dark patch on the cheek. To our delight they breed freely here undoubtedly helped by the accessible peanuts food supplement.
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A woodland shot of a mature heron quietly waiting for a meal to appear, as to opposed to actively hunting. He didn't catch anything this time then wandered back into the shade.
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