Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
A chance to compare Little Owl and Tawny Owl in similar positions.
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Little Owls always seem to look disagreeable.
But it a more a human perception than an actual display of mental state.
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The morning of last day of continuous rain sees this uncomfortable looking Jackdaw waiting on the bare tree-stump.
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A juvenile Magpie, with no sight of an adult, takes their portrait.
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We have lost count of the Great Spotted Woodpecker juveniles, now with the full spread from 'Feed Me' to 'I'll Feed Myself' including the 'I'll accept what's offered but find my own as well'.
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A female Chaffinch flying in to a feeding site determined to see off another already feeding.
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A male Chaffinch about to make a slight mistimed landing on the edge of the Tree-stump.
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A female Chaffinch flies away from the kitchen window bird table with a seed in her beak.
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A Red-legged Partridge takes a nice photo of themself.
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A male Yellow hammer stops by for an early delivery of corn and seeds. The beak is powerful with an interesting curve shape.
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The Tree Sparrows have produced their first round of youngsters, and are getting
down to the business of making the next batch.
The juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker stayed throughout, more interested in
looking for the next feed.
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Its cold and wet - a good time to huddle up with your sibling.
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A Tree Sparrow family clustered in the drizzle.
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As darkness descends the Little Owl makes a visit.
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"I may be little, but I can be fierce!"
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A Little Owl stops on the post for a few minutes in the middle of the afternoon.
These birds can be seen day and night - so when do they sleep?
It seems that they are only partially diurnal and sleep for some of the day.
If you find one sleeping in the day you may get a really close look at the bird.
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It's easy to forget that Little Owls are about both day and night. Here unusually caught in flight - the fully stretched out wings appear longer than we expected.
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On a single night and morning we had quite a procession of visitations.
Left to right, top then bottom:-
1 The Little Owl made a short visit showing the illusory back of the head
that still looks like a hawk to us even though we know that it isn't.
1-2 Between these frames a Bat flew by - see later.
2,3,4,5 A longer visit by the Little Owl
6 A Wood Pigeon made a brief stop at first light (slightly Grey background)
7, 8 The Little Owl makes another visit as the day lightens.
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Between the first and second little Owl pics we had a frame exposed for no obvious reason. 'Winding up the brightness' found this bat flying at about 3m high behind the post. The extreme lightening avoids the post, which would otherwise appear almost white.
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A few female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies appeared over the 'Duck-shaped' pond,
perching on the Hop-sedge and then dashing off after prey (too small for us to see).
This female flew into the frame from the right, looped around and landed into
the breeze at a crease in the leaf which she had left a second or two before.
All this in about 2/3 of a second.
The sequence is middle right, left along the top, middle left, bottom on leaf.
The Montage is fairly accurate but slightly adjusted to avoid overlaps.
We can supply the camera originals if you should want them.
Both of our 'favourite pic of the week'.
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On the last sunny day before the rains the Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies still flutter around us along the sunny walks. This is a male.
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On the last sunny day before the rains the Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies still flutter around us along the sunny walks. This is the female.
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This is the first sighting here for 8 years (last time in May 2011) of one of these Thick-legged Flower Beetles. Several seen since this sighting.
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What is called a Mint Beetle, living up to it's name, on a Mint leaf.
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From the outside of our patch we spotted this pristine juvenile Blue Tit, who offered us forward and profile views.
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A juvenile Great Tit.
The sharp edge of the head's Black-Yellow
boundary always exactly aligns with the bottom of the eye.
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House Sparrows are becoming a more regular sight here. Not as agile as the Tits, they manage the Peanut feeders by perching on the anti-squirrel 'cage' to reach the nuts. Here is one stopping off on the Meadow Post, beak full of feather(s) that must be for a nest somewhere.
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Mother Great Spotted Woodpecker seems to be offering to feed the inverted youngster, but the youngster 'lets go' and within 15cm of so of the fall is already mostly turned over for normal flight. Such agility.
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In this pair of images about half a second apart you can see the fragment of peanut in the adults beak (right) appear in the juveniles beak.
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This juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker sits in the rain awaiting the next beakful of 'squishy things', or maybe even more peanuts.
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A Green Woodpecker female is looking in need of a Preen.
These birds mostly hunt in the ground and in Ant's nests as you can
see from the state of her beak.
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A really soggy adult Green Woodpecker starts a rainy day.
Here begins 4 days of almost continuous rain and drizzle, during which
over 90mm of rain (3.5 inches) was accompanied by endless overcast
skies.
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A male Great Spotted Woodpecker has a rest on the Meadow post before resuming his 'feed the chicks' duties.
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A juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker waits hopefully for a feed.
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All within the same minute, this male Great Spotted Woodpecker managed to take 3 different nicely separated portraits of himself!
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There are at least 3 juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers (with red over
the top of the head) being fed by the adults at our peanut feeding
stations.
As we watched this encounter seemed almost unreal - the juvenile spent several
seconds slowly revolving around the perch to the underside.
Dad (red nape) then gave it a feed.
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Once there Dad gave him the food, and the juvenile just let go and dropped down to grab the wooden post below the camera frame.
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There were 3 juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers in this tree at once,
but true to form one of them flies off before the camera moves to photograph it.
The bird on the right was having a bit of a peck at the Blue Tit nestbox but it
is made of woodcrete so did no harm.
After a few years most wooden nest boxes get rendered unusable by Woodpecker
damage.
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This large and heavy insect is a Cockchafer Beetle, also widely known as a May
Bug. We often find a few in the Moth trap in the morning.
The white flecked wing cases indicate this is a recent emergence.
In common with many Moths and Beetles the males have feathered antennae to detect
the chemical signature of females. So this one is a female.
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This large and heavy insect is a Cockchafer Beetle, also widely known as a May Bug. This one is a male (feathered antennae at the top) lifting the wing cases prior to taking off.
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An early morning walk found this solitary Poppy in the crop margin, along with an attendant Hover-fly. 2 days later it was gone in one of the regular mowing of the field margin and Bridleways. 4 days later the remains of the plant was already working on another flower!
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We love the flowers of Irises, their slightly untidy interpretation of 3-fold symmetry is delightful
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This startling moth is called the Burnished Brass. The vivid gold wing patches
are created by iridescence, and only show when the lighting and angles are
appropriate - it is a rather drab little creature otherwise.
So we got lucky with this one!
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Here is the Lempkes Gold Spot Moth, in the same family as the Burnished Brass.
After a few minutes of trying unsuccessfully to get an image in flight, we put
her on a bit of white card for this photo. This moth gold spots are iridescent
like the Burnished Brass, but the white spots are not lighting dependent and
must be some sort of reflective white pigmented scales which really outshine the
white card at all angles.
As usual, the moment you release them outdoors they fly blithely away.
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This Moth was a delightful 'first' for us - a Green Silver-lines Moth, here in his box warming up for his turn in the spotlight.
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The Green Silver-lines Moth performed nicely in flight - this is two of the flights.
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This Small Magpie Moth fly by and landed in a hedge plant.
It turned out not to be a 'vanilla' Magpie Moth, but a different species
the Small Magpie Moth.
A search of our archives finds that some of our 'Magpie Moth' ID's should
be 'Small Magpie Moth', not yet corrected
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This Cinnabar Moth kept flying by us, and we couldn't resist catching it for a few photos. You don't usually see the bright red whole wing on the resting insect.
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The moth trap from the previous night caught this elegant Light Emerald Moth that flew for the camera a few times before release.
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The Blood-vein Moth (no actual blood - just a striking red line across the wings) is also an 'old friend'. Here are 3 flights that show you both sides of the wings.
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An early arrival for this female Banded Demoiselle Damselfly. The females don't have the characteristic dark band on the wing that you see on the males. This insect is slightly smaller than the Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly and has lighter and green tinted wings.
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An early arrival for this female Banded Demoiselle Damselfly. The females don't have the characteristic dark band on the wing that you see on the males. This insect is slightly smaller than the Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly and has lighter and green tinted wings.
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A female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly has a wonderful green and gold iridescent body. Note the complicated tail tip of the female as opposed to the male.
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A female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly has a wonderful green and gold iridescent body. Note the complicated tail tip of the female as opposed to the male.
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A female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly has a wonderful green and gold iridescent body here shown as the detail of the head.
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A male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly with his blue iridescent body and dark wings.
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A male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly with his blue iridescent body and dark wings.
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A male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly with his blue iridescent body and dark wings.
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A male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly with his blue iridescent body and dark wings. The Grey wings are accentuated here as he shows overlaps of 2 and 3 wings.
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An identical scale montage of a Great Spotted Woodpecker female and a
Green Woodpecker male. The sexes of each species are of similar size.
So Green Woodpeckers are substantially bigger the GSWs.
Our venerable reference book says 12" and 9" respectively, giving
likely weight difference of more than twice (the cube of the linear size).
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Here we see the male Blackbird on 23rd May at 07:52, 26th at 05:00 and 27 at 04:31.
"The children wake up screaming for food earlier each morning".
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5 days later the female Blackbird also made several visits over a couple of days. In the leftmost image (taken last) she has some tiny morsel in the tip of her beak.
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Both male and female Blackbirds are appearing regularly at this site. We have picked one of each for a little comparative montage.
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A pair of Yellowhammers breakfasting at 5.30 a.m. (about half an hour after sunrise).
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Probably the same male Yellowhammer visiting the stone over 2 days.
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A Red Kite glides speedily overhead so we get an opportunity for some accurately spaced montages.
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A minute later the Red Kite was circling a little further away.
This is about 2 seconds of flight.
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A genuine moment from 3 Mallard Ducks in flight. The female (left) and two males flew past, perhaps 100m away.
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A few seconds later, this time against some blue sky, the female has moved to the front.
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Still the only species of small Damselfly we are seeing, here a male Azure Damselfly waited long enough to get this portrait. Unusually sharp image along the whole length.
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Wild Roses in the hedge give it some sparkle and wonderful fragrance.
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Here is one of the flowers that has dropped all it's petals (NO we didn't pull them off!) highlighting the stamens.
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These Rose flowers are a rich source of Pollen. Watching this Honey Bee doing her stuff we noticed that she regularly moved a couple of centimetres from the anthers in order to pack her Pollen Baskets with her most recent collection before returning for more.
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A very attractive Bee on a cultivated Lavender flower in a large pot. Not seen here before, and since seen on other flowers
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If you look up Harlequin Ladybirds you will see a huge variety of appearances, not apparently related to their sex. But they know one another all-right!
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Swallows have started perching on our electrical power lines. Here one of two perched on a wire took off and made this approach to the other. To us it looked like an attempt to mate with a so-far uncooperative female.
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A Swallow perched on a power cable provides a chance at a decent portrait.
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