Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
A young Reeve's Muntjac Deer walks quietly across the site hoping to find some food in the dark of the night.
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Visits by the same or different Blue Tits at the hedge bottom, here 'stealing' a corn grain.
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Great Tits are only a little larger than Blue Tits. We normally think of both species as having matt feathers, but this Great Tit shows a lovely glossy head - could it just be soaked?
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A more typical view of a Great Tit, poised nicely on the stone.
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A Squeakquence (sorry) of Fieldmice (Wood Mice) at the meadow over a single night as the Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) count soars.
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At the hedge bottom the Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) are less exuberant but the different camera setup allows better photos of small creatures.
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To a Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) a corn grain must be a really substantial feed.
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It is easy to forget that the beautiful smooth breast plumage of a Pigeon is actually hundreds of individual feathers carefully groomed to perfection.
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A good shake out to settle the feathers helps turn this juvenile Wood Pigeon's chaotic feather duster appearance back to a small sheen.
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A couple of juvenile Wood Pigeons share the bird table, plumages back to it's smooth profile.
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There seem to be several Red Admiral Butterflies feeding around the site. This one is on Yellow Buddleia that goes on flowering until the first hard frost. You can see the Butterfly's Proboscis tightly wound.
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Well away from the universally loved yellow Buddleia, these Red Admiral Butterflies,
along with wasps and Greenbottles, drinks the juice of a fermenting fruit.
Apparently Butterflies can get drunk from fermenting fruit, and get so woozy
that you can pick them up.
The butterfly on the left has had a couple of bird pecks on the
wing.
Red Admirals used always to migrate south for the winter or succumb to the cold,
But recent mild winters allow them to overwinter, even been seen flying in
December and January, so our recent unexpected sightings are a trend.
Greenbottles were forever disturbing the butterflies - you can see
another one flying in upper lefti
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The tolerant female Kestrel flies in to land on this tree branch over the access track about 100 metres from us. A quiet approach between our 2 north hedges doesn't seem to bother her at all. She spends another couple of minutes hunting, also showing how she keeps her head still on this swaying branch, before flying off towards the house. We didn't see her again this day.
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The female Kestrel perched on a Black Poplar branch.
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The female Kestrel perched on a Black Poplar branch.
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The female Kestrel flies from her perch on a Black Poplar branch.
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Fieldmice (Wood Mice) are quite variable in appearance, but we don't remember seeing a Piebald mouse before.
Here is a montage of 3 of the visits - we assume just the one mouse has this appearance.
Piebald is apparently a recessive Gene - both parents have to provide
it before it manifests itself in the offspring.
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At the same site we see here a 'normal' Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) accompanied by a 'Yellow
Slug'.
Only our second sighting ever of a Yellow slug, the first one a few weeks ago.
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The increase in rodent numbers makes it worthwhile again for Owls to
hunt over the patch.
Here this Barn Owl, not seen for months, makes a short stay on the meadow post.
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The increase in rodent numbers makes it worthwhile again for Owls to
hunt over the patch.
Two and a half hours after the Barn Owl stops by, the Tawny Owl stops by for 7 minutes.
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Hours after seeing the Female Kestrel on power cables to the north, we find the bird on one of her favourite perches -a Footrest of a disused Telephone pole. For once she let us pass on the path some 10 or 15 metres away, allowing this sequence of the bird seen from both sides of the post. We haven't rescaled - apparent bird size reflects our distance from her.
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A better look at the female Kestrel on the telephone pole.
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Read this sequence right to left as the camera caught the landing of the female Kestrel on the 11kV cable. You see here about 1 second of action.
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The photographer feels 'spotted', but the female Kestrel concludes he is 'mostly harmless' and continues her hunt.
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This Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) displays whiskers of impressive length.
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Squabbling? Showing Off?
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A Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) leaps high over another just before midnight.
We normally put this behaviour down to males showing off to prospective mates.
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In the meadow this Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) streaks away from unseen danger. A minute later the Fox renders the danger visible.
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Buzzards are starting to appear around the site again.
This one lands on the Meadow Post and stays for about 3 minutes.
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This Buzzard is regaining balance just after landing - about 300mS after the landing in the montage.
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A young Rabbit.
Love the whiskers!
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A young Reeve's Muntjac Deer picking up the days left-overs.
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This Grey Squirrel is feeding up ready for the Winter when they will only emerge from their Dreys on warm days.
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This Grey Squirrel is feeding up ready for the Winter when they will only emerge from their Dreys on warm days.
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A Fox making a mid-afternoon visit to hunt in the orchard.
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The Fox stays for about 20 minutes before exiting through a now well trodden path through the south hedge.
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The three pristine Red Admiral Butterflies seem to have stayed near the house. In the morning sunshine they alternate between warming themselves on this sun-facing wall (along with a Bee and lots of flies) ...
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... before moving to the Yellow Buddleia to refuel.
Apart from Ivy, this generous Buddleia seems to be the only local source of nectar.
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A Couple of Fieldmice (Wood Mice) come out just after dark in search of any food left by the evening visitors.
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As daylight fades these two little sweeties 'played' on the grass in front of the meadow camera.
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As night arrives, so does this Tawny Owl caught in touchdown at the kitchen window.
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The camera at the kitchen window doesn't multi-trigger, so yours-truly fired off
the camera manually from the dark kitchen to capture some portraits. Here we
suspect that the bird was aware of movement at the window but stayed
anyway.
The photographer can't see any detail outside the window until a picture appears
on the back of the camera, so what we photograph this way is pot-luck.
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The Tawny Owl stayed for a few minutes on the perch before flying directly to the meadow post (about 50m away) for another few minutes hunt.
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A surprise was to find 3 pristine Red Admiral Butterflies feeding from the
flowers on the top of a 3m high Yellow Buddleia that came with the house
30 years ago.
This Buddleia is so vigorous that we take it down to 'knee' height
when the flowers have finally been stopped by the first frost. It is a 'magnet'
for butterflies and moths at the end of each flowering season.
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The weather is turning generally colder, but a bit of sunshine and desperation
to make the most of their last days means butterflies and Dragonflies make
appearances near the middle of the day.
This is a Small Copper Butterfly - you normally see the orange upper wing
but here we see the subtle appearance of just the underside of the rear wing
with touches of the orange showing through.
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The female Kestrel lands to hunt from a branch in one of the Ash trees along the South hedge.
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The female Kestrel sees something in the recently cut grass margin, and dives onto it. You sort of expect a rodent to be the target, but no, this Cranefly is worthy of the effort.
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Then a first for us - this female Kestrel runs over the grass to grab another prey item. The bird is, not unexpectedly, not particularly good at running, and we show here about every third image of those taken at 7 fps - so just under half a second between each image accurately montaged except for the last which would overlap the previous, hence the white bar. We never saw what she caught, but the grass is alive with Craneflies.
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Finally the female Kestrel flies off, we hope replete.
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She lands on a conifer branch at the inside SE corner of our patch, here photographed from outside. She is mostly sheltered from the brisk wind, but the branch is gently bouncing. In this aligned montage you can see how the hunting bird keeps her eyes stationary by flexing her body and neck.
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She moves to the top of the same tree more exposed to the wind, and the branch she is on exceeds her ability to compensate for the movement. Rather than a partial compensation, she stops compensating altogether and her whole body moves as one.
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Half an hour later the female Kestrel spends 16 minutes hunting from the post in the meadow.
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The behaviour of this female Kestrel suggests that this is the bird we Christened 'Grey Feather', even though the result of her moult seems to have produced a normal set of tail feathers. Here she is on one of her favourite perches on a protruding dead branch of an old apple tree.
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Next day the female Kestrel moves to a footrest on the disused Telephone pole.
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The female Kestrel flies from the footrest on the disused Telephone pole low over the ground and out of sight.
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In previous years Small Copper Butterflies have been very much an occasional sighting - this year there are several at various places in the meadow and along the access track. This is a female ...
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... and this a male Small Copper Butterfly. The tip of one wing has been bird pecked or damaged on a thorn or similar.
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A male Brown Argus Butterfly basks in the sunshine.
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The female Sparrowhawk makes a rare stop on the Kitchen bird table.
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This Kestrel dives down from an 11kV wire above onto the harrowed field.
After a minute or two mostly 'lost' in the ground debris, the bird leaps into the air
and flies off. This is an accurate montage at about 7 fps except for the bird on the
ground (lower left) to the first moment of the flight.
The tail suggests 'male', the head suggests 'female', so probably a juvenile.
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A male Migrant Hawker Dragonfly stops for a moment on a cut Blackberry stem.
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A lovely old lady - a Common Darter Dragonfly, seeing out her days.
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PHOTOBOMBED by SQUIRRELZILLA?
We think the Squirrel has an acorn in their mouth, and another in the paws.
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"What's a Kangaroo doing here"
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It is a leaping Reeve's Muntjac Deer of course, once the initial disorientation is over!
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This Reeve's Muntjac Deer appeared about 7m away across the pond, and quietly walked onto the mat of Iris roots over the water, disappearing behind the metre high fronds.
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An hour after midnight this female Reeve's Muntjac Deer has probably been attracted by the smell of fruit.
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How Twee can you get?
In the hour before midnight this Fieldmouse (Wood Mouse) delicately nibbles a cherry
pip it has selected from jam-making fruit waste.
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On the Ash tree on the main pond island the unripe Keys (Ash seeds) make a striking sight in the sunshine.
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Two weeks later the same Ash tree Keys (seeds) have now ripened. A few are already starting to 'wing' their way to the ground.
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The Ash keys are hanging on to the tree on the main pond island, even though all the leaves have fallen.
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The timing of the different Ash trees around our site is quite variable. Ash trees are propagated using seed (rather than genetically identical cuttings) so the trees show quite a lot of variation. While the tree on the island has lost all of it's leaves, this vigorous Ash tree at the eastern hedge still retains most of the yellowing leaves and about 100 'bunches' of keys.
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A healthy male Chaffinch stops off at the stone. All trace of the blue beak and intense feathers colours discarded for the winter.
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This Dunnock seems to have plucked up the courage to confront a male
Chaffinch at the left edge of the original frame.
This Chaffinch is NOT the individual above - it wasn't in great shape
with a large Tick and early stage Bumblefoot.
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A few windfall apples moved from the orchard are the focus of attention for this pristine Great Tit.
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The whole site is dotted with white-ish feathers discarded by moulting birds. Here you see the water repellent nature of the feather material possibly aided by preen oil or powder. Naturally wet from a heavy dew.
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