Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
The classic 'looking back over your shoulder pin-up shot of this male Muntjac Deer.
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This male Mallard Duck look like it has tried to bring half the pond's duckweed along with it. The Duckweed is not complaining - any pond without the weed will soon gets it first delivery along with assorted tiny creatures and eggs caught up in it.
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Here male and female Mallard ducks have probably just come from a pond, both bringing some of the duckweed with them.
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A male Mallard duck - what a gorgeous bird!
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This juvenile Rook for some reason decided that our roof ridges were a good place to wait to be fed. Unfortunately the parents wont approach with humans about and we never even saw a feed. Here the north wind (from behind the bird) is disarranging the birds downy feathers as he calls the Rook equivalent of 'FOOD!'.
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The parents arriving in the nesting tree screamed 'danger' warnings at the youngster, who finally worked out that it wasn't safe with us about, and it made a clumsy flight into the Black Poplar you see in the background - and out of our sight unfortunately.
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A Swift catching an insect - beak open next to last image from the left and the tiny speck of life it consumed is just in front of the open beak. These at about 7fps so slightly less than 1 second of action here.
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After a few minutes the Muntjac Deer Fawn decided it wanted to suckle. The mother is licking the Fawns bottom - presumably to encourage it to defecate, though we didn't see it do so or find any signs afterwards.
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Enlarged from the above, the Muntjac Deer Fawn has it's mouth on one teat and we can see 2 of the others. We don't know how many Teats there are.
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The Muntjac Deer Fawn then started to get rather rough, ramming the mother's teats presumably to get out the last drop of milk. Mum didn't enjoy this, moved aside to disengage the Fawn, and then effectively blocked the Fawn from access to the now dry milk bar.
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From an upstairs room the departing Muntjac Deer mother and fawn pair were still visible over the hedge.
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Mother Muntjac Deer and her Fawn stopped for several minutes right outside the kitchen window. Here was the fawn ducking down to walk forward under Mum - for no reason we can imagine.
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Mother Muntjac Deer and her Fawn stopped for several minutes right outside the kitchen window.
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Mother Muntjac Deer and her Fawn stopped for several minutes right outside the kitchen window.
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A Little Owl is also making occasional visits providing an opportunity to show you the relative sizes of Tawny and Little Owls.
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One of our Tawny Owls stopped by for a few minutes on the top of the meadow post, quietly examining the surrounding rough grass for something to catch.
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A Young rabbit trying out this rather stale carrot. Wonder what 'he' thought of it?
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This Grey Squirrel holds a stale carrot in it's paws to devour it like a stick of rock.
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The Orange-tip butterfly season seems have lasted unusually well this year. This is the head-on view of a male perched on a fallen Dandelion 'clock'. You can see the orange glow between the wing tips.
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Here a male orange-tip with wings spread in the sunshine. You can just see the wonderful green tracery showing through from the other side of his rear wings.
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This is a female Orange-tip Butterfly, showing the same green tracery on the
underside of the rear wings, but never a trace of the orange.
Just what the 'Boys' are looking for!
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We surprised this pair of Muntjac Deer (male nearest to us) along our east inside boundary path. We stared at each other a for a minute or two before they decided to depart.
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The female behind the (out of focus) male us showing her long and manoeuvrable tongue.
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The male Muntjac Deer spent several minutes wandering up and down the main path across the meadow. Bottom right is the same individual but lit by a final shaft of sunlight.
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This looks to us like a fallen Blackthorn twig.
Try to image carrying a 3 metre pole holding it about 1 metre
from one end to get an idea of how awkward this must be to fly with!
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Isn't Magpie plumage just wonderful? Primary (flight) feathers outlined in black and sharp white-black transition lined up diagonally across sequences of feathers
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This Magpie (with the glorious iridescent tail (green) and wings (blue) apparently attacking a poor innocent pigeon (grey banded tail sticking out left)
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The male Kestrel's hunt, hovering into the wind, was swiftly ended by the arrival of 2 Rooks
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A Kestrels hovering hunt was quickly ended by the arrival of a couple of Rooks (black birds left and right) making the male Kestrel feel particularly unwelcome.
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We caught several Heron flights - mostly when the bird saw us when we went out for a look about.
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We caught several Heron flights - mostly when the bird saw us when we went out for a look about.
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Outside the kitchen window the Heron stomped imperiously along the edge of the main pond.
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Flying into the wind the Heron makes a flight against a partly blue heavens, allowing the creation of an accurately positioned montage at about 7fps.
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For just a few days a Heron spent most of the day hunting on our patch.
We presume that the bird can find things in the water that we fail to see.
This is a montage, photographed through the kitchen window, of the Heron
leaving the pond to walk along the bank.
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The Heron was exploring the rough grass, occasionally picking some small morsels we just couldn't see. But here we could definitely see what the bird caught - a Vole (probably a Bank Vole judging by it's tail length) which it tossed about a bit and then swallowed whole.
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This female Blackbird regularly feeds on an overgrown gravel path outside the study patio doors. But here she is clearing some of last years dead grass, undoubtedly to make the nest a bit more comfortable.
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Another twig for the nest.
You can see that the twig has been broken off, rather than simply fallen off,
by the fresh leaves on it. Rooks mostly seem to prefer such fresh wood, whilst
Jackdaws mostly pick up fallen wood.
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An orange-tip butterfly with its uncurled figure-of-eight proboscis down in the nectar of the Green Alkanet flower.
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This an adult Wheatear perched on a not very attractive 11kV power cable. This is our first sighting of an adult Wheatear here, and our only other previous sighting was of a juvenile in September 2015.
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A couple of Grey Partridges at the edge of the Wheat crop.
The yellow edge is the result of sprayed weed killer used to create a 1 or 2
metre wide fallow strip along the edge of the crop, and it has spilled along the
edge of the growing crop creating this vivid yellow strip.
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Straight off Google: "Crop milk is a secretion from the lining of the crop of parent
birds that is regurgitated to young birds. It is found among all pigeons and doves
where it is referred to as pigeon milk. An analog to crop milk is also secreted from
the esophagus of flamingos and some penguins."
The texture is much thicker than human or cattle milk, and we are sure
that this pigeons breast feathers and beak are thoroughly gunged with it.
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The Muntjac Deer have suddenly started calling at night and visiting places we can get to see them. This is the male (with antlers) mouth open making his barking call just after dawn on a grey morning.
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Half an hour before seeing the male Muntjac deer near the house, the trail cam at Round Pond used it's IR lamp to catch this gorgeous little triplet of Mother Muntjac Deer followed by a really tiny new Fawn. Mum is barely the height of the daffodils, so this youngster is really tiny - certainly the smallest fawn we have ever 'seen' here.
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A pair of Jackdaws seem to have decided that it is time to get their nest
underway. Over 2 days we caught several images of twigs being collected at the
woodland site and the tree stump (about 10m apart) of which this is a sample in
the order Top left > Right > Bottom Left > Right.
Unlike Rooks, which seem to prefer living twigs they break off, Jackdaws
seem to pick up quite large pieces of already fallen wood.
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The merry seasons of 'what's that juvenile bird' has arrived. This is a juvenile Dunnock yet to grow its adult tail. There were at least two of them around this steel gate, and none could fly with much control yet. Our bird books says that juvenile Dunnocks are nervous and skulk about in the undergrowth. Ours hang about waiting for some corn!
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A female Chaffinch landing on the tree stump, photographed a day apart but at close to the same time of day.
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A male Chaffinch in his full breeding colours.
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When we see female Pheasants at the moment they are often accompanied by the 'Harem boss', who we like to think of as 'Squiring' the ladies as they hurriedly feed before returning to their nests to incubate 'his' eggs.
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The male Pheasant is often seen accompanying females as they feed. Here with his back to camera we see the magnificent tail spread out to show the multi-feather and tapered structure.
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Oh dear - a Rat makes the first of its now annual Spring appearances. Would a Rat attack a young Rabbit - a Google search suggests that the answer is 'Yes', but we saw this rabbit again later in the night.
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The Tawny Owl with blue-Grey facial feathers makes a landing on the perch outside the kitchen window at 1 minute past Midnight.
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A Little Owl visit to the meadow post - this one of just 3 minutes.
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The Skylarks have put on a show this year far exceeding any other year, with aerial 'dog-fights' (all over so fast you never catch them on 'film') and birds on the ground, as here, as well as in flight.
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Here are 3 sequential images at about 7 fps of a skylark rising into the sky. We have shrunk the gaps between the bird images so that you can see some detail.
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Birds don't make facial expressions, but we can only see 'Joy' in this Skylark.
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A pair of Sundogs on either side of the (intentionally obscured) sun. Both had white streaks pointing away from the sun that stretched away from the sun nearly as far as they are from it (this was the camera widest zoom).
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Here some details of the right-hand Sundog over the top of a lonely nest.
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An unusual 'wave' pattern sky looking east in the morning.
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About a year after our last sighting the Little Owl (actual common species name - not just a 'small' owl, though it is) paid 2 visits, the first very short and the second for 5 minutes of restless activity surveying the area.
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While building the montage it became apparent that the first very short visit includes a Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) in the Little Owls Talons.
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