Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
An unusually quiet evening for the adjacent farm/business traffic allowed us to see Hares on the farm land.
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This male Mallard took fright as we approached the pond.
This is an accurate montage at 7fps, so less than half a second of flight.
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This male Mallard duck is flying in to join 'his' female. There are 4 frames here, the last sees the splashdown near the bottom left corner. This is about half a second of action.
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An unusual shot from ground level of the flowering Blackthorn in the hedge to the north, with several Wood Pigeons on the top, with flowering Oil-seed Rape on either side. From this ground level you wouldn't expect to see the distant field over the hedge, but the land rises along this section. When this land was pasture we used to get the effect of cows 'standing' on the top of the hedge!
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This mature Heron flew past the Rookery - unexpectedly not getting chased by any of the normally territorial rooks.
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We don't often seen Cormorants flying over, but about 20 minutes after dawn this pair flew almost overhead from the South. Whenever we see them they manage with very little wing movement.
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Black Poplars make & drop Catkins weeks before the trees leaf. Our 24 year old trees (all grown from 'cuttings') have started to make catkins of their own. This one has fallen (or been chewed or pecked off) complete with the sheath. The Red colour is a characteristic of the Black Poplar Catkin.
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This fine healthy Fox has selected a disgustingly rotten apple to carry away.
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A pristine young fox attracted by the smells from another feeding site.
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This robin must have some chicks to feed!
Our Robins (and similar birds) here don't use open nestboxes here
- they prefer the dense hedges, so the nest could be 'anywhere'.
The bird appeared again 90 minutes later with another grub long
after sunset.
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A sweet moment between this pair of Robins
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A Beautiful goldfinch picking the seeds from weed stems in and over the main pond
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A Goldfinch watching us watching it through the living room window
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A beautiful elegant male Blackbird on the log, but its not the whole story ...
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... "Look behind you!"
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Two startled female pheasants calling and fleeing in the flowering Rape-seed crop attracted the male who flew to their location over our heads - we only rarely get this chance of a pheasant in flight.
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A few days later, the male pheasant as we most often see him, patrolling the plot and making his territorial call every few minutes in the daytime.
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From inside the conservatory we grabbed this image of a Long-tail Tit gathering building material for the nest. It had trouble controlling its flight with such a large aerodynamic disturbance.
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A grabbed image through a window for nest building - this time a Wren who seems to be building a nest in the ivy just to the left of the window. The bird has a few fragments of moss in its beak - a day or so before it was small twig.
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More material for the Jackdaw nest, probably the one in the remains of Owl box 15 metres or so away.
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A little peaceful feeding by an interesting mix of birds.
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A casual grouping of small birds picking up the scattered remains of the food put down for them.
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We are pleased to see 7-spot Ladybirds in many sunlit patches. Here one of several sunning themselves on a Lodgepole pine cone.
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This 7-spot ladybird has chosen a blackberry leaf to sun itself.
Ladybirds are surprisingly active even near freezing temperatures
as we discovered when researching appearances of insects in
UV light - see
Seven spot ladybird in UV. Even at 4 degrees C one
was walking about rather than torpid like most other insects at the temperature.
Once warmed up all the insects went back unharmed to where we found them.
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Jackdaws Squabbling - the bird on the perch may be fleeing, or positioning itself to defend with it's claws in flight - we don't know 'what happened next'.
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These two Rooks are getting along just fine.
"Have you heard the one about ..."
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We watched this Grey Squirrel scrabbling about near the root of the tree, unearth this 'delicate morsel', and proceed to chomp it down with gusto. Even with about 20 images we couldn't work out what it was eating, - probably a buried Horse Chestnut. Early Spring is not a great time for squirrels to find food and they need to supplement their diet with some of last autumns stored bounty.
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This Grey Squirrel was first to the site after we put down some food, and nothing else is going to get any until it is stuffed!
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Any big bird gets harassed by Rooks from the nearby Rookery. This Juvenile heron spent some time flying around the area with one or more Rooks chasing it. The heron finally decided to land at the lake on the far side of the brook, and the final Rook peeled off. The horse just kept on munching!
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The Tree sparrows are appearing at various sites, and this one watched us as we photographed him perched in one of our many scruffy shrubs - just the way the wildlife likes them.
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The Grey squirrel taking away one of his Five-Seven-a day
as Sultanas - nobody tell us we don't feed our wildlife well!
The recommended 'Five-a-Day' fruit and Veg has moved to Seven-a-day.
We are Vegans - we only count the calories - its all 'fruit & veg'!
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This rear view shows an interesting number of 'legs' on this male Grey Squirrel.
Randy little sod!
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This Red-legged partridge, an irregular visitor, passed through our new 'open' site for this one-off lovely portrait.
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This looks like a pair of Red-legged partridges spending a while with the female feeding at the now mostly quiet track edge with him on guard. Note her wide open beak.
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A welcome but very tatty Peacock Butterfly, awake after hibernating through the winter, ready to do the all important business of making a new generation.
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Considering that this insect is about 6 months old after winter hibernation, its in pretty good condition, here feeding on the blossom.
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Another winter hibernating butterfly - the Brimstone - is here feeding on a Red Dead-nettle.
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No idea what is going on between these Fieldmice (Wood Mice), but it looks 'friendly'.
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Did this Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) forget his umbrella?
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This Yellowhammer male is really startling!
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A side view of a male Yellowhammer at a different site. We can't tell whether it is the same individual.
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Female chaffinch, feet just beginning to 'deploy for landing', aerobraking on her approach.
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Another day, a slightly later moment in the landing procedure.
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Finally the female Chaffinch lands on the tree-stump. Her back is not as green as that of the males.
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This perky Robin doesn't hide from the rain.
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A pair of robins enjoying a final feed together before dark.
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Bramblings are a new species for us - the first sighting ever was in October 2013. Bramblings usually seem to be happy in small groups, but these two show us that they can be as niggly as any other bird!
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4 delightful bramblings as we normally see them, quietly searching for food missed by the other visitors.
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A better view of a single brambling.
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This male Mallard Duck decided on a major wash & brush up (well beak up) in the pond by the house. Here the male is facing left hardly visible through the spray. The female sat on the bank watching.
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'Our' pair of Mallard ducks spending some 'quality time' together on the bank of the pond by the house.
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A pair of rooks had been pursuing this Red Kite out of their nesting territory, and now just one had almost stopped it's pursuit well out of frame. This is an accurate montage of about 1 second of flight.
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The colours of the sunset is echoed in the plumage of this beautiful male pheasant.
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"Dare I nip in and grab it?"
Actually Corvids (which include Jackdaws and Rooks) generally
co-exist peacefully with Pheasants.
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The peanut is just that awkward bit below the log the Rook is perching on, so the wings and tail are helping balance.
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While refurbishing one of our automatic camera setups we found several of these small brown spiders running about under the base. This one is shown where we found it on a piece of tanalised (pressure treated) timber used to support the base carrying the equipment.
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