Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
"The Thinker" - a squirrel in quiet mode suggests the famous sculpture.
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Pheasants tend to look startled regardless, but this one has good cause as this squirrel streaks by.
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Plenty of fallen leaves still about from last year being taken off' to be built into the Dray.
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A patch of warm weather at the end of May brought out the first
dragonflies of the year.
First a Common Blue Damselfly - actually not very common here
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Here is our much more numerous blue damselfly - the Azure Damselfly.
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The Large Red Damselfly is only large compared to the 'small ...'
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More detail of the intricately coloured thorax.
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A pair of Large Red Damselflies 'in tandem' laying eggs in the duck-shaped pond. The male is at the top.
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The Broad Bodied Chaser, a much larger Darter dragonfly. The male has a blue abdomen - we haven't seen one yet this year.
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A Hairy Dragonfly (species name) having a very successful hunt over a sun warmed hedge line This was our first ever identification of this species here.
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This is a joining of 4 images panning along this rabble of Starling perched on the 11kV high voltage cables that pass by our house. Moving about to get them in view means the joins are imperfect.
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A 'zoom' in on the top two wires part way along. The top row is slightly out of focus despite being less than a metre nearer.
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The Wild Roses having erupted drenching parts of the hedges with their sweet fragrance. Its nice to see a honey bee enjoying the pollen.
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This huge (undoubtedly cultivar) poppy has appeared each of the 20 years we have been here.
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An un-fudged single frame of a Brown Long-eared bat flying away from us, with a moon in the corner and our telephone pole in the middle.
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Bluetits have found a nice nesting hole in a corner of the eaves over our utility (boiler) room. Here an adult has a tasty insect for it's brood pauses on the overhead mains electricity wires.
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Delivery of food to the Bluetit chicks in the hole in the wall as an accurate montage. Don't miss the bird half into the hole.
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And here a bird exiting, pausing for a moment on the TV aerial lead when he realised we have appeared while he was inside.
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The pheasants have dug out a scrape in the vegetable bed and use it for dust/soil 'bathing'. The spreading of the head feathers in the lower image looks quite remarkable - we didn't know that they had that much control.
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The only freshly emerged butterflies at the moment are orange tips. They don't seem to feed to on buttercups but fly over them on the way to their regular food plants.
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We found this impressive (30mm long) Cockchafer Beetle (also called the May Bug) in the moth trap (along with a poor catch of only about 100 moths). Here he is in flight. When not flying the slightly blurred wings lay along the body under the wing cases of which his right is clearly visible and the left is edge-on to the camera.
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Here the Cockchafer Beetle is creeping over hawthorn foliage, wings neatly hidden and protected under the cases.
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The green upon the upper wing of this Green Carpet moth is more noticeable when the insects is 'perched', and fades over the few weeks of it's life
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This is the very common Angle Shades Moth. Note the common colours between the moth and dead leaf spots.
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Do animals even notice things are 'out of season', like this
frozen cherry from last year's crop?
We very much doubt it - yummy - what's next.
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Robins everywhere, mostly as pristine as this one, but a few looking very much the losers of the many fights they engage in.
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An Unusual moment of ascent caught by the tail tip going through the sense beam just above the top of the tree-stump
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Next evening a Grey squirrel watching us watching him as we approach to bait the tree-stump top.
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Next morning it was raining (you can just see some of the drops) and we expect that this Grey Squirrel was shaking wet out of it's fur using the twisting action well documented for dogs after leaving water. The flash lasts about 1mS (1/1000 sec) so to blur the image in the morning gloom the action is really fast.
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2 Grey Squirrels frolic or squabble (choose according to taste)
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A chase in progress - these 2 Grey Squirrels are obviously destined for the ground below. We have seen these pairs chasing round and round up the pole, along the perch, & jumping to the ground in repeated cycles.
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Another Grey Squirrel chase - this time round the 90 year old black poplar at the entrance to the farm track.
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A few weeks of noise and Starling parents delivering food to the
chicks in the loft has been replaced by scrummaging heaps of
fledgeling starlings perching around the peanut feeder demanding
to be fed.
The parent is feeding a mostly obscured bird on the left while
one on the right shows the yellow gape.
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The parents know to bring 'fresh' food as well.
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A few weeks of noise and Starling parents delivering food to the chicks in the loft has been replaced by scrummaging heaps of fledgeling starlings perching around the peanut feeder demanding to be fed.
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Presumably 3 fledgling starling siblings.
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A Rook harassing a buzzard too near the Rook's territory. Read left to right - the last image was partially obscured by a tree
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The Kestrel male with lightly striped tail is being forced to do rather more hovering than in the past because the adjacent farm has had many overhead wires removed. These 2 images are 150mS apart and originally at the same place in the sky.
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Eyes 'shut' for protection, 2 female Great Spotted Woodpeckers squabble. Every year we seem to get 2 pairs of these birds but don't know where they nest.
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A male Great Spotted Woodpecker chasing away a female chaffinch just vanishing off the edge of frame well past the left of this crop.
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This singing Skylark montage contains 10 sequential images all taken in just over a second and laid in two rows starting top left
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Robin and Great Tit having a Gossip over tea - NOT.
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Supper together.
This male (with dark ear tufts) has 3 ladies following him around. At times
he makes his characteristic call every 2 or 3 minutes.
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The racket from the loft is matched by a seemingly endless flow of worms and insects through the hole to feed the brood(s).
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And here the departure - this time without a fecal sack.
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The racket from the loft is matched by a seemingly endless flow of worms and insects through the hole to feed the brood(s).
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Here is a different viewpoint giving better idea of the layout.
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An extended encounter with one of the several hares normally only glimpsed in the corn crop or bottom of hedge. These 3 accurately positioned images were sequential in a set of 37 images at about 7 fps.
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These 4 accurately positioned images were sequential in a set of 37 images at about 7 fps.
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Long crops seem to be handled by leaping over the top. This individual turned after the next leap to follow the easier path made by the farmers sprayer wheels sinking into the mud.
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Another opportunity for a lick? Fieldmice (Wood Mice) seem to find the mucus on slugs tasty!
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We love the view of the marvelous grippy pads on the feet of this Grey Squirrel as it dives down behind the log.
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