Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
This is the detail of the head and thorax of a male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly.
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Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies thoraxes are covered in fine hairs, but they don't show well in most photos. Here backlighting makes them more obvious.
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Finally female Beautiful Demoiselle on the left and male on the right.
NOT EXACT SCALE - Don't read anything into the slightly different sizes.
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The site is wonderfully awash with Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies.
'Beautiful' is part of the common name, as well as being a good description.
About 20 individuals flutter about as you pass a sheltered warm patch.
The females bodies are iridescent and vary in colour from green to gold according
to the lighting. Females also have the white dot (pseudo-pterostigma) near the upper
tip of all 4 wings, though it is sometimes hard to see.
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The male Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies have intense blue bodies, and no white dot on the tip of the wings.
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A rather magnificent little Beetle on a folded over Iris leaf.
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A rather magnificent Red Soldier Beetle gives us a couple of different views.
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We have an in-house joke that 3 twigs is enough for a Pigeon nest.
Here a Wood Pigeon is obviously not convinced by our counting.
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Here is a Rook youngster demanding food from the hard-pressed parent.
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The 10m length of Green Alkanet (covered in BLUE flowers) are now attracting Honey Bees. Here is one with proboscis deep in a flower with the Pollen Baskets just about full enough to take the bounty back to the hive - wherever that may be.
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We have seen lots 'Carpet Moths' here over the years, but it seems to be the first time we have seen this 'Wood Carpet Moth'.
 on sweetheart (first sighting here) (crop)(r+mb id@768).jpg)
Hawthorn Blossom is forming patches of white hedge all over the area.
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On the Hawthorn Flowers we spotted this Hover-fly which promptly departed before we could get some more detailed pics of it. We seem to be seeing a number of new-to-us species of Hoverfly this Spring. This seems to be Syrphus Ribesii.
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Another new Hover-fly for us, perched on a leaf. A hover-fly specialist has corrected our original ID, which we agreed with once we had studied ours and two apparently reliable reference pics in detail.
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A pair of Red-legged partridges were resting on the edge of the concrete track opposite the front of the house. Here is one of them (montaged) as it got up to walk down to the track.
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We couldn't buy Hornbeam trees for our initial planting, but were gifted some saplings which have been quietly growing in the depth of the wood, and have started making these delightful seed clusters.
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Our first Odonata (Dragonfly family) of the year was this delightful male 'Beautiful Demoiselle'. This is a big insect for the UK - length about 50mm (2 inches) and in flight has a characteristic slow fluttering wing beat.
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We tend to mostly notice the male Orange Tip Butterflies, so catching this female (no orange!) feeding on a ground ivy flower was worth a pic.
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This overwintered Comma Butterfly has had a few pecks on the edge of the wings (symmetrically so the wings were closed at the time). This quite large butterfly then 'vanished' when finally closing it's wings - that irregular edge disguises the insect remarkably well.
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We are not very good at spider ID's but are fairly sure that this one scurrying
over the disused concrete track (cracks full of lovely wildlife friendly weeds!)
is called Trochosa ruricola
We understand that no British Spiders are dangerous to humans.
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In the farm crop margin a spider has spun this web on the ground, now soaked with overnight rain.
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The male Blackbird is collecting breakfast for his (and Mrs.) nestful of screaming youngsters.
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Blue Tits are actively breeding in every suitable nest box we have installed. This scruffy individual is perched high in a Dogwood bush for a much needed preen in the sunshine. We couldn't resist the 'ball' effect on the right.
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A male Chaffinch showing off his still glorious colours.
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Whilst Chaffinches have bred here for the last 30 years, Yellowhammers came for a couple of years, disappeared for some more, and this year have returned with several 'couples' in the area.
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From 20 frames at this site taken over 4 days, we have assembled this little fun montage, actually mostly accurately placed.
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Here are a pair of Brimstone butterflies indulging in their aerial ballet.
This set of 4 exposures of the rising pair are at about 150mS intervals.
Here the male is always below, with the yellow upper wing that has been
moderately bird pecked along the edges.
Sorry about the ugly orange of the traffic barrier, but it helped the camera
find and keep on focus for the half second of this sequence.
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Orange-tip butterflies often feed on Garlic Mustard flowers - the same plants on which the females lay their eggs, but for 'fuelling' purposes Orange-tip Butterflies will use any suitable source of nectar - here the flower of the 'dreaded' Ground Ivy.
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A male Chaffinch collecting live food for the nestlings
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The Rooks breeding is already well advanced, and they are collecting live food for the youngsters high in the trees above us.
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On the night that we put out the moth trap only 10 metres from this pole (with a powerful 125 watt mercury vapour lamp) the Little Owl spent a couple of minutes on the pole top. Little Owls also hunt in daylight, so the light probably didn't bother the Little Owl at all.
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"Achoo!"
The Lodgepole pine trees every year make a HUGE amount of Pollen that
the slightest movement or puff of wind releases clouds of.
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We often comment on male Mallard Duck 'guarding' feeding females intending a
slight air of irony - guarding usually means quacking a warning as he flies off
in panic. But here the male on the bank guarding the duck in the water is
threatening the Grey Squirrel a couple of metres away, and the Grey Squirrel
veers away.
We need to be more respectful of the males efforts in future!
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The female Mallard Duck was on the front bank of the main pond, sitting on a
heap of Iris Roots racked from the pond The bird didn't like the appearance of a
human at the window, and decided to depart.
No - she is NOT sitting on a nest by this pond.
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Here is a detail of the female Mallard Duck in flight.
The splash of blue is her partly obscured speculum.
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"Gangway"
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Wood Pigeons pairs are so affectionate.
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The Wood Pigeon starts to land on the kitchen perch just as the Grey Squirrel emerges from underneath the bird table. Quite a shock for the Pigeon we imagine.
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This Tortoiseshell Butterfly has lost some of it's scales, but has mostly avoided the birds. After stoking up on this Dandelion it will continue the search for a mate.
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Along the crop margins the Dandelion are mostly now 'clocks'.
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The male Yellowhammer that frequents the bend in the Farm road is here caught selecting a small oval seed from the bird seed mix we sprinkle about.
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A few days on, we are lucky to get male and female Yellowhammers in the same frame and both reasonably in focus.
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A montage in celebration, over 30 hours, of the male Yellowhammer at the hedge bottom.
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At the kitchen window bird table the automatic camera catches this Great Tit stopping by with a beakful of grubs destined for a nest somewhere.
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Next day we spot a bird leaving one of the new Woodcrete nestboxes, and waiting for the next exit is rewarded by this image of a Great Tit flying off in the direction of the kitchen window some 30m away. So youngsters being fed already.
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A Chance view of the pond on the other side of the brook catches this (what appeared to be) solitary Canada Goose gliding across the pond, complete with reflection and framed by the nearer trees we were peering through.
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Wow!
We don't know what is going on between these two Foxes, but we
think that it is more 'play' than fight
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Fruit tree blossom is spread around the site.
We would love to add 'Apple', 'Pear', 'Plum' or whatever, but the trees we
were allowed to transplant were mostly unidentified and we don't remember
which is which!
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Fruit tree blossom is spread around the site.
We would love to add 'Apple', 'Pear', 'Plum' or whatever, but the trees we
were allowed to transplant were mostly unidentified and we don't remember
which is which!
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Half an hour after the female Roe Deer visited the mound, a glance over the southern hedge showed her walking through the Wheat Crop along one of the sprayer tractor ruts. She ambled down the rut but somehow detected the distant presence of a human, and decided to depart.
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The female Roe Deer could have 'escaped' through a hedge further away, but instead made a speedy but un-panicked progress along this hedge.
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At one point the female Roe Deer made this graceful leap. At 7 fps the images would overlap. We toyed with 'stretching' the montage, but decided to keep the dimensional accuracy by skipping frames. This is the even numbered frames ...
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... while this fills in the gaps with the odd numbered frames.
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The male Roe Deer spent about 5 hours overnight on our patch. This is the best picture of the Antlers, in Infra Red, at 2.30 a.m. at the edge of the Round Pond.
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Monarch of the Glen?
The male Roe Deer was still on the site 5 hours later after sun-up, here back at the
edge of Round Pond, possibly for a drink.
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The day after we saw the male Roe Deer tis female visited, here staring at the camera. Did she hear a sound from the camera that we have never detected?
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Roe Deer (which we see only occasionally) are MUCH bigger than our regular Reeve's Muntjac Deer, This little identical scale montage shows you the difference, Muntjac on the left.
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The Reeve's Muntjac deer Fawn is now perhaps 2/3rd the height of Mum. It is weaned but is often seen with Mum.
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A moment of panic upon spotting 'our' male pheasant lying on his side in the dry soil of the salad bed. But he is just having a sunbath, soon up and about again, clucking and displaying.
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As we walk along the farm track, the male Pheasant follows us for 50m, probably hoping that some corn would magically appear. We put some down, we looked around for the Pheasant, but he had given up the wait and disappeared through the hedge.
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A view to the North of the leafing trees at the brook - a glorious vivid green of Field Maple in it's first flush.
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A few days later a walk down to the brook allowed us to capture this detail of the emerging Field Maple leaves and flowers.
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