Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Spot the Butterfly on these mint flowers!
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Here you can clearly see the Brimstone Butterfly's proboscis busy sucking up the life-giving nectar.
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A sunrise walk catches a distinctly mysterious set of images of the sun
rising through layers of smoky mist.
Smoke from the awful fires in the Western USA (Sep 2020) made it across the USA and the Atlantic
to appear in the skies over Europe where the intensity and colour of these pics
is showing the effects.
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A sunrise walk catches a distinctly mysterious set of images of the sun
rising through layers of smoky mist.
Smoke from the awful fires in the Western USA (Sep 2020) made it across the USA and the Atlantic
to appear in the skies over Europe where the intensity and colour of these pics
is showing the effects.
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A sunrise walk catches a distinctly mysterious set of images of the sun
rising through layers of smoky mist.
Smoke from the awful fires in the Western USA (Sep 2020) made it across the USA and the Atlantic
to appear in the skies over Europe where the intensity and colour of these pics
is showing the effects.
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A newly emerged Comma Butterfly, here showing both the dark bottom of the wings with the white 'comma', and the vivid orange top of the wings.
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A pair of Small Copper butterflies courting in the rank grass. The bottom individual has a few blue spots said to be an unusual 'aberrant' form.
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A pristine Red Admiral Butterfly.
Next stop the south coast for a mass-migration to Europe.
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More used to finding Garden Carpet Moths in the moth trap, here is one on a Blackberry leaf at midday, albeit in the shade.
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Plume Moths when perched all have something like the same appearance of a capital 'T'. But the 'top' of the 'T' is actually a set of several hairy wings normally only seen properly in flight'.
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A beautifully kempt Badger snuffles the way over the meadow site.
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At the same site this Baby Rabbit pays an early evening visit.
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Over about an hour there are repeated visits by this Polecat to the Mound.
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About half-way through the above sequence the fox passed through, watched suspiciously by the stationary Polecat.
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A Fox takes a close look at the camera baiting site, possibly more interested in worms and insects than what is left of our offering.
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2 Reeve's Muntjac Deer spend a few minutes quietly feeding together,
and performing a little mutual grooming.
A sort of 'I'll Scratch your back if you scratch mine'
) feeding and mutually grooming 2+4+6+7 of 7 (montage)(r+mb id@1024).jpg)
A Reeve's Muntjac Deer (female or juvenile) quietly walks through this site.
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Mallard ducks moult by losing all their flight feathers and staying safe on the water. As they end the moult they start 'exercising' in groups for flights lasting several minutes. Here a group of 4 (plus a 'tail-end-Charlie' we have left out) flew round the brook several times, a lot of the time with their wings beating in accurate synchrony as here.
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Several Blue Tits were feeding from the west facing wall of our house, perching on the rough wall coating and chasing after insects flying from the adjacent foliage. The 2 birds are montaged for effect, but the top bird & insect are positioned as in the camera original.
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Small piles of chewed up Horse Chestnut husks are all over the site. Here a Grey Squirrel carries off the prize conkers as a take-away or for a buried cache.
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In the dappled sunlight of the afternoon this young Reeves Muntjac Deer looks through the hedge as foliage up and right makes shadows across the body.
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A gorgeous gentle and delicate Reeve's Muntjac Deer steps her way quietly through the night.
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Small Raptors (birds of prey) provide occasional sightings.
This Peregrine Falcon in the area on a local 11kV crossbar. So far
sightings of Peregrines are at most one a year.
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High overhead a Hobby wheels round in search of Dragonflies. We see this bird a few times each year when Dragonflies are about.
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Flashing by as Sparrowhawks always seem to do, this female catches herself on camera. We usually 'see' a Sparrowhawk perhaps a score of times a year
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This female Kestrel, at the moment a regular visitor, is hunting from the shelter of a conifer
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Sunning itself on a piece of Corrugated Iron, this Common Darter Dragonfly shows the wing structure well against the weathered metal.
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A magical moment at the time, and still is in this photo, as this Common Darter Dragonfly gently lands next to his shadow.
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The dominant Dragonfly here in this cold weather is the Migrant Hawker. This one is warming itself in the sunshine hanging from an old Blackberry stem.
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The Southern Hawker is the second-most populous Hawker Dragonfly here.
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A few distant sightings of a Buzzard over the site over
the last few days is supplemented by this visit to the Meadow Post for an at-least 10 minute
stay.
Here is a dramatic moment in the landing
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These two moments of the Buzzard landing at about a third of a second apart.
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The Buzzard in hunting mode - stand and watch for some unfortunate ground dwelling creature.
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Something new in the Slug world for us - a 'Yellow Slug' (actual common name). About the same size as a Leopard slug and equally striking in it's own way.
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Worryingly few Ladybirds of any sort at the moment. This seems to be one of the huge number of variants of Harlequin Ladybirds.
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This Red Kite flew in a huge arc, providing the opportunity for some pics.
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This Red Kite flew in a huge arc, providing the opportunity for some pics.
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This Red Kite flew in a huge arc, providing the opportunity for some pics.
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A Fox prowls through the Woodland site
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A Fox prowls through the Woodland site - a 'head and shoulders. portrait.
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2 Mint Beetles doing their thing on a mint plant.
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An individual Mint Beetle gives us a good view of the carapace's Gorgeous iridescence.
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The camera that takes pictures at this woodland site lives under the cover of a now huge Leyland Cypress tree. Almost certainly this Grey Squirrel has bitten off this twig complete with developing cones, and is taking it somewhere 'quiet' to eat the goodies.
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An Uber-twee Rabbit standing on the food as it eats it 'teenage' style. The ears look out of proportion, but that may be quite a normal part of development. We don't normally see Rabbits this young at the high resolution photo sites.
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We can't even begin to imagine why this juvenile Rabbit is leaping so high over the grass.
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Over two days we show all these three birds at the same scale -
Left: A belligerent looking Juvenile Green Woodpecker.
Middle: The smaller juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker
Right: The female Kestrel is a bit of a mess from her moult.
Why is the Great Spotted Woodpecker - the smallest bird here - called 'Great'?
The 'Great' just relative to the substantially smaller 'Lesser Spotted Woodpecker'
(which we have never seen) while Southern Europe also sports a 'Middle' Spotted Woodpecker.
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As the day starts to break, one of the local Foxes enters through the gap in the hedge you can see behind, and is here climbing out of the ditch.
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As evening draws in, this fox wanders down the Mound. The fallen branch is typical of what we are seeing all over the site - dead branches littering the ground after the recent gales.
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This young Reeve's Muntjac Deer is using her enormous tongue to flick away a fly that landed on her face.
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To put the above image into some context:-
Approaching the blocked gate we startled away a female Reeve's Muntjac Deer who
ran off down the crop edge and through the hedge. We thought we heard one or
two 'barks' from the Deer as she went.
As we moved through the gate this young Deer stood looking at us.
This moment catches a fly landing below her left eye, and her tongue whipping out
to flip it away. The fly you see at the top of the tongue is
actually in-flight, with the insect's shadow roughly where the
fly originally was.
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A sweet few minutes a week later recorded by the automatic camera at the east boundary shows us Mum and juvenile Reeve's Muntjac Deer quietly foraging together. We don't routinely bait this site, so they must be finding fallen Hawthorn berries and the like.
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Neither of us are keen on green flowers, but our aesthetic judgement is not shared by the insects. This head contains both unopened and open Ivy flowers.
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Neither of us are keen on wasps, but we don't interfere with them unless they become a problem, but we have to admit that this is a wonderful show of yellow and black.
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Grass cut the previous day, This Grey Squirrel was vigorously scraping at the ground, and it seems found an acorn.
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2 hours later a Grey Squirrel is biting into an acorn on top of our dilapidated gate.
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A juvenile Reeve's Muntjac Deer checks over a photo site for some tasty additions to his diet.
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As we walk up an orchard path towards the house, this young Reeve's Muntjac Deer is walking the other way. We both stop and look at each other before the Deer makes a slightly nervous jink to the left and then quietly walks off in that direction.
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On the edge of Round pond, this Fox gazes up at the overhanging trees. No idea what is attracting the attention.
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A couple of minutes later the Fox reaches the East boundary and is here scent marking one of the hedging trees.
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Lying down on the job - this badger spent a few minutes crunching up windfall apples while sprawling luxuriously like a Roman Emperor.
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This male Migrant Hawker Dragonfly landed to hang from one of the giant thorns of a Blackthorn plant in a hedge.
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A pair of Speckled Wood Butterflies in a courtship flight. Read right to left in pairs, accurately positioned at 10 fps.
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A couple of Cinnabar Caterpillars on a Ragwort plant they have completely stripped of foliage.
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The female kestrel shows us how to scratch your eye with a stiletto!
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Near the end of the day the Kestrel about 4 metres up in the Apple tree lets the
photographer reach about 7 metres from her. Not wanting to discourage her visits,
a tactical withdrawal followed and she was still there when back indoors.
Half an hours later she had 'gone'.
Our next brief sighting was 7 days later.
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An hour later the female Kestrel surprised us by momentarily hovering about 2m above the back 'garden lawn'. The photographer just pointed the camera and 'fired', and was surprised to find even 2 frames with reasonable pics of the kestrel on it. Long-live Auto-focus!
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Immediately after the hover the female Kestrel landed in the back-garden weeping Silver Birch ...
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... but a strong gust of wind made her lose balance, and she ended up with her back to the gale. Not a comfortable angle for any bird ...
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... and she quickly flew back to the more stable perch in the apple tree.
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The second day of female Kestrel sightings was of her perched on the bracket
supporting our electricity supply.
Fortunately the top conductor is the Neutral polarity so she would survive touching the
wire.
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4 minutes later we find the female kestrel has moved on to the disused Gatepost. The heavy (and vertical!) post left of middle is an 11kV power-line support. She quietly preens but not quite ignoring us. Her tail feathers are becoming quite a mess as she moults.
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Here she stood quietly for at least 4 minutes, presumably hoping something tasty would appear on the concrete track or verge. She doesn't bother looking at the hedge - she isn't suited to pouncing in dense foliage, unlike a Sparrowhawk who will fly straight through a dense hedge in pursuit of prey
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Earlier on this day we found a juvenile Rabbit lying dead on a path. Apart from
a few bird pecks it didn't show any obvious sign of attack by a predator. We
moved it to the meadow camera site in hope of seeing a Fox or Badger take it
away, but instead what seems a endless sequence of Magpie visits reduced the
bulk of the Rabbit to almost nothing. The Kestrel seems to have decided a bit of
carrion would be good, grabbed a bit and arrived at the meadow post with it. But
the Magpies were not having this interloper take 'their' food, and quickly chase
the Kestrel away.
A little licence taken with the timing - the Magpie chasing
away the Kestrel took place too quickly for the camera to catch
it.
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This pic of the landing female kestrel is 300mS after the one in the montage above, and you can see that the content of the left claw is not the usual vole or mouse.
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For 2 days we had multiple sightings of the local female Kestrel
First we see her on the post of the disused gate viewed from the farm's side.
We slightly surprised her arriving here, and she eventually decided to depart.
Here she crouches before launch, and then 2 moments about 0.2 second apart.
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The actual camera rate is 10 fps, so here we fill-in the missing two pics. of her launch.
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A few hours later the female kestrel is hunting from a Branch in an apple tree at the end of our 'orchard'. She seems more tolerant of humans here.
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A few hours later the female kestrel is hunting from a Branch in an apple tree at the end of our 'orchard'. She seems more tolerant of humans here.
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