Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
About 50% of pictures of the male and female Reeve's Muntjac Deer show the male sniffing around the rear of the female. He must not miss his chance - what else are males for?
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One minute later the male Reeve's Muntjac Deer looks a bit disgruntled, and actually looks at something else.
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This Red kite made a long fly-by before finally disappearing behind trees. Accurately spaced at about 10 fps.
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6 minutes later a Red Kite made a return pass with the head better lit.
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Our first (and so far only) sighting this year of a Southern Hawker Dragonfly. This is a female hanging on stinging nettle flowers.
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In the top of a spiky teasel, this Sloe Bug quietly explores.
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This female Common Darter Dragonfly seems to like the top of our
dilapidated rotary clothes drier.
A beautiful creature on real Tat!
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This female Common Darter Dragonfly seems to have taken a liking to twigs at the top of the Woodpile outside the kitchen.
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One of the fun things about Darter Dragonflies is that they often return to the perch
from which they have just flown, given a chance to photograph a landing as here.
NOT an accurate montage but a decent 'impression'.
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This female Common Darter Dragonfly seems to have taken a liking to twigs at the top of the Woodpile outside the kitchen.
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Our little Reeve's Muntjac Deer family entering the site from the just harvested and harrowed farm land near the North East corner.
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Next night we catch our little family at the South West corner. The Fawn is
enjoying a feed from the Milk-bar, while Dad eagerly sniffs Mum to see if she is
up for a little action.
Apparently female Muntjacs can sometimes mate just a week or two after giving
birth.
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A teatime aerial squabble between 2 male Chaffinches. The Dunnock at the bottom seems to have decided to escape before one of the Chaffinches turns on them.
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Behind a bench is an odd little patch of undergrowth with a patch cleared to allow cutting to prevent it growing too tall. This deer has wandered into the cleared patch behind where we were sitting, and here was quite definitely eating stinging nettles despite there being plenty of non-stinging leafage available.
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A male Reeve's Muntjac Deer busily Chewing an apple he has found in the brambles and stinging nettles under our most productive (cooking) apple tree.
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Some feather maintenance in progress, starting to preen the way along the row of tail feathers. The feathers may be getting uncomfortable as the moult begins.
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A few days later, walking down the Farm Road, this event bordered on a surreal experience. A Pigeon took off from one of the young roadside Lombardy poplars, nothing in itself to grab the camera, but as it flew away an appearance like miniature parachutes 'littered' the sky, spinning as they descended. It seems they are feathers from the Pigeon's tail, for some reason many being shed at once. The insert is an enlargement of the middle-right feather.
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Have we found the Pigeon with the missing tail feathers? Sadly NO.
This pic was taken the day before of a similarly tail-deprived Pigeon, which may
mean this is not an uncommon occurrence, but you have to be very lucky to see it.
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This female Kestrel streaked past the window and landed on a substantial horizontal branch of the oldest Apple tree. In shade on an already gloomy day we couldn't see what she was up to, but looking into dark areas the camera sees her dismembering what looks to us like a juvenile Starling - one of the dozens to be seen on the electricity cables. She spent almost 20 minutes eating this really substantial catch.
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An unusual amount of wet 'bait' overnight at this site attracted what is most likely several different Red Underwing Moths over a period of 6 hours. Here is an accurate montage of 5 of the 10 camera triggers that made useful images.
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Next night the camera caught these two Red Underwing moths at this site together.
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And another night on finds two Red Underwing Moths joining a leopard slug for the feast. It's not very clear, but it is possible that the moth on the right is sucking up fluid that wets the slug. We have definitely seen fieldmice (wood mice) licking slugs, but this sighting is less certain.
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This Red Kite wheeled around our heads, which we here try to represent at smaller than an A1 piece of paper!
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One minute later the departing Red Kite seems more interested in whatever can be seen the to right than where they are going!
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Next day this Red Kite made a couple of circles, but too awkwardly positioned for a long sequence. Finally she vanished into the distance.
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A Wood pigeon with an attractive natural symmetry as it lands.
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This male Chaffinch undercarriage down ready for landing.
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This juvenile Robin has not been visiting the site to show his developing
red breast. but here looks full of 'joy' and anticipation as the bird flies into the
site.
But no, ...
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... its an attack on the male Chaffinch standing innocently on the stone.
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2 days running we have had face-to-face encounters with a young Reeve's Muntjac Deer. This one we watched from outside the kitchen window, browsing on the grass and weeds by the main pond, and then stepping down the bank to the low water to get a drink. A quite magical experience.
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Next day the young Deer got within about 2 metres of the stationary but undisguised cameraman. The apparent 'looking down' angle of the top right image is absolutely genuine.
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These lovely little creatures can lick their eye!
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A somewhat tatty but busy male Blackbird at the hedge bottom. We have a few pics of him with food items in his beak, but none worth showing you. We have no idea where the nest is.
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On the other hand the female Blackbird has been spotted several times with various
grubs and adult insects in her beak.
The 'kitchen hygiene' in us makes us desperate to give this food a wash!
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2 days later she has found a cleaner looking morsel for the screaming youngsters.
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The female Blackbird has found yet another juicy slug to take back to the ever open beaks.
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3 well separated Red Kites made the most of good conditions for thermal up-drafts. This one spent a minute or so just 10 or 20m from us. Against a predominant clear sky, we can't work out 'accurate spacing', so we have tried to suggest the motion in close spaced montages.
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The Red Kite wheels overhead.
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The Red Kite wheels overhead.
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Bye-bye Red Kite - lovely to see you so well.
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A female Blackbird collecting a small slug, plus several other 'things' in her beak. We think she is feeding another batch of chicks in one of our old sheds.
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This branch fell from a tree at the brook in the Spring storms, but this is the first time we have seen a Heron using it as a perch. Although some 70m away the bird wasn't pleased to see us, and after a couple of minutes decided to fly to the other side of the brook.
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The Heron continued the flight against shaded foliage, gradually picking up airspeed. This image is exactly the same from rate and width before re-scaling as the take-off above, so comparison is meaningful.
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The last frame before they disappeared into the shade of the trees.
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A Fox on the Prowl passes through the hedge-bottom photo site.
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A profile image of a fox is quite unusual at this site.
Facial features suggest that this is the same fox seen the day before,
so presumably the flash and thump from the camera box is not enough
to put off this individual.
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A sort of Head-and-shoulders of the Fox.
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Our first ever sighting of a Clouded Yellow butterfly, along the sun facing
side of the south hedge. This is the male.
This insect has a vivid orange appearance in flight, but closes the wings
immediately on landing so you don't get to see the upper surface.
The insert is a slightly blurred moment in flight where we can momentarily
see the top of the wings with the even richer yellow.
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A middle sized Dragonfly, the Common Darter
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The Brown Hawker Dragonfly is well named - even their wings are tinged brown. Here is one flying by taken at about 7 fps.
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The middle image in more detail.
The damaged wing is very typical of the insect after a few days
in the sunshine. Damage can get much worse than this before it has
any impact on ability to fly well.
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The male Reeve's Muntjac Deer checking out 'his' female for readiness to mate. A second or two later you can see his tongue is still hanging out.
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This image of a badger at the east hedge struck us as unusual - you can see the Badger snout looking rather like the classic farm pig's. Badgers spend most of their time 'nose to the ground' so we don't normally see the snout.
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The season of Windfall apples is enjoyed by many creatures. Here a badger arrives at what looks like a pristine apple, holds it in place with their paw for a bite or two from it, before wandering on.
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We thought we had seen the last of the two "Demoiselle Damselfly" species for the year, so are pleased to see this male Banded Demoiselle well away from their normal haunts.
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A Field Grasshopper landed unexpectedly at our feet, and the camera caught the little creature before he 'hopped' onwards.
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A Sparrowhawk barrels over the kitchen window perch. Several occurences of sightings here over several days.
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The camera by this pond caught 3 successive frames showing what must be at least
4 Bats hunting. This is the first of the 3 frames. Top right is an enlarged
image of the two on the left, with spacing closed up a bit.
Insects close enough to the camera mimic bats and birds in flight are quite
common, but close enough to the camera to give this impression are both bright
white from the IR illuminator, and badly blurred.
Thanks to the foraging deer for triggering the camera at a suitable moment. We
used to actively photograph bats, but that's another story.
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A pair of Holly Blue butterflies mating on a Hawthorn leaf.
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This is a male Brown Argus butterfly.
The Brown Argus is classified as 'Blue' butterfly, and its underwing (not shown here)
is quite similar to Common Blue. We initially mis-identified this individual
as a female Common Blue but a friend corrected our ID.
We are starting to see more blues here than in past years.
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Some bright weather with patches of cloud brings out the large raptors - here a buzzard glides by looking for a thermal up-draft.
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Some bright weather with patches of cloud brings out the large raptors - here a buzzard glides by looking for a thermal up-draft.
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Right outside the Kitchen window this female Kestrel arrives with a Short-tailed Field Vole
caught on the ground outside the kitchen window.
On the CCTV record we first see the bird swoop from the Ash tree down to the
ground (then out of frame). 30 seconds later the bird with prey in Talons flies up to the
perch, flying behind the perch to land facing the camera, as you see here.
The bird momentarily leaves the prey laying on the perch and it shows no signs of life.
30 second later it grabs the prey in the talons again and flies off to the left.
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This Red Kite flies by - the liquid clear eye giving us a suspicious stare.
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Several Rooks were trying to make life uncomfortable for this Red Kite. But one glance upwards by the Kite seems enough to deter this pass.
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These two Red Kites obviously practicing aerial combat. It never got really 'nasty' so we rather enjoyed the aerobatics. Parents often spar with their youngsters to teach them 'the ropes'.
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What looks like the same Buzzard made 3 visits to the meadow Post in the course of one evening and the next morning. Each visit lasted 2 to 3 minutes.
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More detail of the Buzzard's morning visit.
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At around 6 p.m. this female Kestrel gave a quarter of an hour's
hunting demonstration watched through an upstairs window.
She flew in unexpectedly to a Willow tree on the far side of the pond about 22m away.
After a few minutes she flew onto a dead branch of the Ash tree occupying the
pond's island perhaps 17m away and started an intensive hunt. She flew from this
branch down to the bottom of the bird-table post, stayed a minute or two, and flew
back to a different branch on the Ash tree. Finally she flew down the TOP of the
bird table, unfortunately missing that cameras trigger beam.
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More detailed picture from the hunt - the launch.
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More detailed picture from the hunt - the return after the failed attack.
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