Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
In just half an hour this site saw visits by a Fox and two very obviously different Badgers.
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A pristine badger looks for a morsel others have missed.
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Earlier the same night, possibly the same Fox now at the Woodland site, still on the prowl.
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This fox look intently for some unfortunate on the ground.
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We haven't studied Badger gaits, but alternate corner paws off the ground suggests some sort of 'Trot'. Movement blur suggests that our friend was moving at a decent speed through the site.
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Trundling through the night this badger is pushing it's muzzle down
onto the now rock-hard soil.
We have has less than 3mm (1/8 inch) of rain in 6 weeks. A formal drought has
been declared in various parts of the UK.
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A Handsome Comma Butterfly perched on a Blackberry leaf on which it is throwing a lovely shadow.
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Also a Comma Butterfly, here with the orange wing surface hidden, but showing the white mark that gives the Comma Butterfly it's name.
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A pair of Small White Butterflies flew by us 'in tandem' and landed on this leaf to continue their assignation.
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We believe this to be Pale Willowherb in the field margin.
This is the first time we have documented it here.
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A male Brimstone Butterfly feeding on the plentiful Purple Loosestrife flowers growing in soggy soil at the main pond margins.
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A Reedmace flower - male catkins on the top and female at the bottom to catch wind blown pollen from, hopefully, other flowers.
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A male Banded Demoiselle Damselfly perched delicately on a blackberry leaf.
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Here we have a female Broad-bodied Chaser Dragonfly. The male of the same species has the back of the body covered in a powdery blue pruinescence.
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A male Ruddy Darter Dragonfly perches on the ragged end of a hedge twig. This one gradually changing colour to the mature form.
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A brightly coloured mature male Ruddy Darter Dragonfly on the desiccated leaves of a
bramble stem cut because it was growing over a path.
Keeping the paths navigable is an endless task at this time of year.
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A clearly hatched Song Thrush Egg dumped away from the nest by one of the parents so as not to show predators where the nest is.
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Next day 50m, away from the hatched egg, what may be Mum or Dad to the hatchling.
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Grey Squirrels can be really NASTY to other Squirrels.
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Grey Squirrels can be really NASTY to other species who really don't compete with them.
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A Tawny Owl makes a pounce on some unfortunate prey.
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We found a rook lying dead outside the kitchen window. We have to assume a bird strike on the window, although we couldn't find any mark on the glass We moved the sad little corpse to the meadow site to see what was interested. To our surprise at about 3.30 a.m. the Tawny Owl landed on the meadow post, immediately flew down for a look and a peck at the dead bird, and almost immediately flew back to the post.
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90 minutes after the Tawny owl came down for a brief look, this pristine fox came and collected his prize to consume somewhere less exposed to daytime 'robbers' - judging from the eyes not quite fully dilated, the daylight was already starting.
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A female Brown Hawker Dragonfly flying above.
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A few days later this male Brown Hawker Dragonfly is patrolling the concrete access track. It is a really good heat trap.
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A male Brown Hawker Dragonfly, stopped for once. We have male and female of this species occupying different areas that overlap near the house - get it together folks!
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A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly decorating one of hundreds of thistles in a 20m stretch along the side of the oil seed rape crop. We saw about 50 of mostly Small Tortoiseshell butterflies on this stretch - more than we have seen at once for many years.
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A Ringlet Butterfly feeding on a Blackberry flower.
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A Green-veined White Butterfly looking for nectar on a mostly 'spent' Blackberry flower.
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A Large White Butterfly feeding on a thistle flower.
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Here is a Small white Butterfly enjoying a Blackberry flower. Without the cue of scale, you can most easily tell Large and Small white butterflies apart by the area of black at the wing tip.
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A pair of Large White Butterflies spiralling into the sky in a mating ritual.
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Our family of swallows has mostly settled on feeding the youngsters on the 11kV cables just to our west. Two juvenile Swallows are on the cables, both hopeful of a feed, but only the right hand side bird got fed this time
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The evidence is there from the camera timestamps, and it is amazing that the Swallow can twist this much in the 140mS between each frame. No wonder it is so hard to follow them with a camera.
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A male banded Demoiselle Damselfly perched elegantly on a leaf tip.
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A female banded Demoiselle Damselfly perched elegantly on a leaf tip. The female has no 'bands' on the wings, and almost clear wings - here you are looking through 4 wings and it is still only a light brown.
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Juvenile Rooks (left) don't have the white beaks of the adult . At a glance you can mistake them for a Carrion Crow except that they are slightly smaller and very sociable.
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An undersized and Grey Badger has to be a growing youngster out learning about where to find stuff to eat. The land is so dry at the moment that these animals may have to put a lot of effort into digging down deep enough to find their staple diet of worms. So they will welcome one of our 'free meals'
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4 days later, this adult Badger arrives as the young badger seems to be leaving, having not previously triggered the camera.
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12 minutes after visiting the hedge-bottom site what looks like the same adult Badger examines the woodland site some 50m away.
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Some sort of caterpillar on its way to an ever open beak of a Blackbird youngster.
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Apple tree tend to drop a few developing apples when they 'know' that they can't bring them all to fruit. This behaviour is known as the June Drop. We collect the dropped fruit and bring them to the photo sites so we get to see them being enjoyed by all and sundry.
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The Gatekeeper Butterfly (also known as the Hedge Brown, and older names Hedge
Eye, Small Meadow Brown, and Large Heath) has two white dots in its black spot
(unlike the single dot in a Meadow Brown).
In the 1970s we got really confused by these Browns, named differently in
different books, and are pleased we have just discovered why.
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These moths that spend their lives precariously over water are generically called 'China Mark' moths, but comes in 4 varieties (at the moment - who knows what climate warming will bring) of which this is the Small China-mark Moth. You can just see the gorgeous patterning that adorns the lower wings.
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A Cinnabar Moth showing us the gloriously coloured top of the rear wings that make the insect so striking when it is in flight.
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We haven't seen an unbroken '22 degree' halo around the sun before this hazy day. The image just fits the frame of one of our 'grab' cameras (APS-C sensor with 18mm on a Zoom lens) so this is the whole frame with slight contrast and colour enhancement to overcome the flare that pointing a camera at the sun produces.
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Another instance of a 22 degree sun halo, this time in a rather less bland sky. This is the unprocessed camera frame.
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For once we managed to keep the birds off most of the Redcurrant bushes this year. So the waste pulp and few spoiled berries went out for the animals. This single berry got left by several visitors.
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This is a Comma Butterfly (the white 'comma' giving it is name just visible on the lower surface of the right wing). This was on Hop Sedge where we now see them most years in the spring/summer. We used to only see them on windfall apples in the orchard in the Autumn.
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A Ringlet butterfly poised delicately on a Hop Sedge frond.
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Continuing the saga of the Grass snake under the Corrugated Iron sheet, here it
is uncurling to escape our disturbance by going down a nearby Mousehole. But the
surprise was that is promptly re-appeared half a metre away at another mousehole
while the tail end was still entering this hole.
But unfortunately total failure at getting the 'hole' event on camera :-(
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At last - a pic of the whole Grass Snake coiled up to warm itself under the corrugated iron sheet.
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The flowers on the Privet hedges barely last a couple of weeks. The Butterflies make the most of it. This is a Small Tortoiseshell probing a floret.
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A drone Fly also feeds from the short lived white privet blossom. Some of the florets here have already 'turned'.
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A Red Kite flies quite low overhead.
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This montage of the kite flying overhead is at 10fps (tenth of a second between images) but even so we have closed the gaps.
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This montage of the kite flying overhead is at 10fps (tenth of a second between images) and the clouds allow an accurately spaced montage.
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In the warm morning sunshine little beetles wander round an Oxeye daisy flower.
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A Marmalade Hover-fly stops off for a feed at this Oxeye Daisy flower.
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The little clump of fiery 'Fox and Cubs' in our front 'garden' coming to the end of their flowering ...
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... as the blowsy Mallow Flowers take over the same patch.
Both self-set, and both welcome to our chaotic garden.
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This is called Scorpion Fly - only the male has the curled tail that gives the species it's common name. And no, it isn't a stinger!
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A female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly (judging from the brown wings not the very similar female Banded) flicking her wings momentarily so you can see them spread out.
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A detail from another female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly highlighting the wonderful intricacy of the veins in the wings.
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A male Banded Demoiselle Damselfly beautifully poised on a leaf.
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30 hours after the sighting of a pregnant Reeve's Muntjac Deer we were delighted to spot this mother Muntjac feeding what looks to us like a very new Fawn. Mother was spending a lot of time licking the damp and tousled fur and assiduously cleaning it. Here the Fawn is suckling from the milk-bar.
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A clear portrait of the little 'Bambi', tip of the pink tongue protruding.
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Mother licking the youngster assiduously, spending time to lick the Anus to encourage it to defecate.
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9 hours later the CCTV shows us the return of the little Reeve's Muntjac Deer family. As the day faded we saw this funny moment when the Fawn disappointedly checked out Dad for the presence of a milk-bar!
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