Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Black-headed Gulls (in eclipse so no black head) were swooping about and jinking
in mid-air, obviously catching insects 'on the wing'. This bird has just caught
something which went down the throat in about 300mS.
Read this bottom right moving upwards
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Black-headed Gulls (in eclipse so no black head) were swooping about and jinking
in mid-air, obviously catching insects 'on the wing'. This bird has just caught
something which went down the throat in a fraction of a second.
Read this bottom left moving upwards
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The high humidity overnight turned the local spider webs into jewellery better
than that used to adorn a starlets neck.
Natural appearance without use of a water
sprayer.
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The high humidity overnight turned many plants into shimmering lace.
Natural appearance without use of a water sprayer.
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As the sun warmed the freshly harrowed soil following the harvest, we saw this strange effect of mist rising from the soil but instead of being blown away by the very light breeze (from right to left here) was in the lee of the hedge and hardly moved until 10 or 20 metres from the hedge.
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The Tale of the Fox starts unexpectedly with this huge harvester making a sweep down the slope of this field.
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Suddenly this Fox streaked in apparent panic out the field being harvested and ran at what looked like full speed along the line of the boundary hedge for perhaps 200m. This is an accurate montage at about 7 fps.
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To our surprise the Fox did not carry on through the hedge and out of sight, but turned 90 degrees toward us and carried his high-speed run along the hedge we were standing next to. It was impossible to keep the Fox in focus as it hurtled towards us, so here are a couple of frames that give you the idea.
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Perhaps 10m from us the Fox veered off to the left and the photographer was trying so hard to keep the fox 'in frame' that he didn't realise it was now over-filling the frame. The gorgeous creature disappeared through the hedge into our orchard and vanished.
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Before 9 a.m. on a mid-September morning some warm early sunshine
brought out variety of insects into a east facing hedge.
This female Migrant Hawker Dragonfly has been flying about and obligingly
landed where we could photograph her.
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Before 9 a.m. on a mid-September morning some warm early sunshine
brought out variety of insects into a east facing hedge.
A Comma Butterfly with it's proboscis is wheedling out juice from the
ripe blackberry it is perched upon. You can just make out the white 'comma'
as a semicircle on the lower (dark) side of the wing nearest to us.
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Before 9 a.m. on a mid-September morning some warm early sunshine
brought out variety of insects into a east facing hedge.
A Small White Butterfly (that is the common species name) is tackling a Blackberry flower.
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At 9 a.m. on a mid-September morning some warm early sunshine
brought out variety of insects into a east facing hedge.
A Red Admiral Butterfly with it's proboscis (just left of the more obvious
leg resting on the fruit) deep down in the not-quite ripe Blackberry berry.
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This Fox visiting the feeding site has it's attention split between the food fragments in front of it, and the possibly much more rewarding movement out of image to the left.
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Our occasional sighting of Muntjac Deer are usually of solitary animals. So this image of 2 males apparently having a trial of strength on the bank of Round pond is a first for us. The water is behind the animal at the top and it likely that it was pushed down the bank and into the water. 3 images left to right a few seconds apart.
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A Dunnock twisting in the air as it approaches the bird table perch below.
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A male Chaffinch, this one with still a trace of blue coating on his beak remaining, flutters over the stone.
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A Red Kite appeared out of nowhere and glided majestically past but we soon 'lost' it behind a hedge. This is at about 10 frames/sec accurately positioned
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The Red Kite appeared with a Corvid 'snapping at its heels' as it chased away the Kite
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Fruit 'plate' - Squirrel style
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"Look Mum, No hands!"
Well, no paws on one side anyway
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Does this Magpie want the pepper top to eat, or has it selected it as something 'bright' in the way magpies are known to collect shiny objects?
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An almost pristine Red Admiral Butterfly warming itself nicely centred on a leaf in the sunshine. Ahh!
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A male Chaffinch at the woodland site, this one without any trace of blue left on the beak, clambers over a fallen Blackberry twig. You can see the Blackberry juice leaking from the base of his beak.
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4 visits by at least two Tawny Owl individuals in a single night offered this set of images for this montage.
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After weeks of absence a Tawny Owl individual made a 19 minute visit. Here is the flamboyant landing and the last two minutes of the suddenly agitated bird moving around on the top after 15 minutes of almost totally static images.
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In the evening before the 19 minute stay a different Tawny Owl made a short
visit. First the bird flew to the thin post (top left) that holds the IR sense
beam sender (pale square with dark middle). We don't know whether the bird
perched on the sender or the top of the post (out of frame at the top left). The
bird then swooped down through the beam (lower left) flying to the photographic
target post (the landing missed while the camera flash was re-charging) where it
stayed for a couple of minutes.
Everything on the left is wildly out of focus because it is metres behind the target
perch, but we think interesting enough to show you anyway.
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An attractive portrait of what seems to be the one female Pheasant visiting at the moment.
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One version of female Pheasant and Grey Squirrel 'sharing' the photo site.
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Same time next day, not such a amicable interaction.
Here the female Pheasant is facing us with her head out of frame to the right
as the Grey Squirrel is jumping onto her back at the root of her
tail.
OUCH!
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"What Me - attack an innocent girl pheasant?"
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A female Common darter sunning herself on an Iris frond.
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A male Ruddy Darter Dragonfly perched on a desiccated blackberry stem. We seem to have an unusually high number of this species this year.
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Our only opportunity to photograph Swallows feeding their youngsters so far this year. Read this sequence as pairs of birds left to right with the adult (always to the right) flying in and then dropping away.
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A pristine Red Admiral Butterfly sipping Water Mint nectar through it's built-in straw.
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A male Southern Hawker Dragonfly hovering in front of the cameraman for a couple of seconds, drifting slowly to the left. We have picked 4 frames from the sequence that allow accurate positioning without overlaps.
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Another hover by the same insect.
Note how the legs are completely folded up - something you DON'T see when we
photograph Dragonflies in our flight tunnel where they are in free flight but
too soon after launch for the 'undercarriage' to have been raised.
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A mid-morning flight for this male Southern Hawker Dragonfly moving through the position of sharp focus for just this one frame as he spends the whole day patrolling his patch around the main pond.
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A female Southern Hawker Dragonfly on the Iris fronds on the main pond. Our second sighting this year of this activity but we never seem to get a good view!
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"Lovely Jubbly!"
This Grey Squirrel has probably started eating while still clinging to the side!
In memory of our friend Ivan for whom this was one of his favourite sayings.
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A Southern Hawker Dragonfly ovipositing (laying eggs) on Iris fronds in the main pond. She spent about 10 minutes laying all around the pond, but almost every stop was out of view or so shaded that neither we nor the camera could see a thing. Finally she reached the front of the pond pausing for a few seconds that you see here. She first had her ovipositor (tail end) out of sight on the left of the frond, and then on the right as you see here, before flying off into the distance after about 10 seconds and we didn't see her again.
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If you have a pond and push an angled stick onto the top that overhangs the water, Darter Dragonflies will often choose it for a look-out post. We used this Willow stick and despite already spouting (as willows do) this male Ruddy Darter likes the perch.
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A Speckled Wood Butterfly on a blackberry leaf in a tiny shaft of sunlight
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Atypically choosing this long flowering yellow Buddleia while the white variety is still in flower, a Red Admiral Butterfly feeds and shows the underside of the wings.
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Atypically choosing this long flowering yellow Buddleia while the white variety is still in flower, a Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly glows even against the orangey flowers.
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A not-so-friendly encounter between two Grey Squirrels.
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These windfall apples are really bitter, but the Squirrels seems to like them enough to carry them away.
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Robins have been flying low over the ground level sites providing some clear images in flight, this one with the bird's shadow on the stone.
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Robins have been flying low over the ground level sites providing some clear images in flight - this time a juvenile flying over an apparently unconcerned female Chaffinch.
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A glorious splash of colour as this male Chaffinch launches from the ground. The normally hidden green rump (not as prominent here as we sometimes see) always seems to us to be unexpected.
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Here a Dunnock flies lower over the ground with head level with ground but whole underbody facing the camera.
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This Migrant Hawker Dragonfly was hanging from a broken grass seed head, and unexpectedly took off as the camera took the first frame. Dragonflies have no known sense of hearing - their world is almost entirely visual. Anyway, one thinks of dragonflies as very light - even the biggest in the UK only just makes it over 1 gram (see Weights of Insects) But even so this grass head swung back to vertical as the Dragonfly let go of it.
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What a bundle of unleashed fury.
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This rabbit is probably only about a 30cm (a foot) in the air but we have no idea why, nor remember, such airborne antics from a Rabbit before.
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Seeing this image made us realise that you rarely see a Robin's tail nicely spread like this.
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These three images are of the same fox out hunting before sunset at the hedge bottom, just after midnight in the meadow, and after Sunrise back at the hedge bottom. We have scaled the images on the different camera kits to be the same size. Look at the animals Irises in the 3 lighting conditions (the flash is too fast for the eye to respond until after the photo). We don't know what the animal caught, but you can't criticise the persistence!
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We are always trying to catch Swifts, Swallows and Martins in the act of catching an insect, but this year there has been a worrying lack of opportunities. But here the kitchen window camera catches a Robin making such an attempt. We often see birds make sudden diversions that we assume are to catch some food item, but have never actually seen the target before.
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We seem to have a lot of Brimstone Butterflies this year. This one is feeding on the flowers of a Teasel. Teasel heads start with a ring of flowers somewhere about half way up the head, which splits into 2 rings, each moving away from the other until it runs out of head at the top or bottom after a week or so. Here the insect is on the lower ring.
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Only the female Holly Blue Butterfly has this dark edge on the top of the wings - the male has barely a trace.
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Lower left is a male Common Darter Dragonfly watching over 'his' pond from a
convenient perch. Top right a male Southern Hawker Dragonfly patrolling his patch
in his own manner - endless flight over and around the pond. He kept flying close
to the Darter, who occasionally reacted but returned each time to his perch.
You don't often see Darters and Hawkers in the same image - these are the same
distance from the camera so you can compare sizes.
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A Ruddy Darter Dragonfly glowing gorgeously in the sunshine as he guards his territory
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