Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
A juvenile chaffinch doing his aerobraking to land, here caught in amazingly sharp focus.
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This week has been a bonanza for sightings of what for now appears to be a 'resident' juvenile male Green Woodpecker. Here he spent about 7 minutes on the top of the Meadow Post.
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When the Victorians built things they tried to provide a little elegance in design
or decorative finish. Now it seems to be mostly:-
Build it strange: the Shard, The Cellphone building
Build it tallest: Burj Khalifa
Build it Functional: Office blocks, Electricity distribution.
But it has to be said that the animals really don't care, as we see here with a Green
woodpecker searching the 11kV power pole for insects next to the circuit breakers
and underground cables to the neighbouring business centre.
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The juvenile male Green Woodpecker makes a flamboyant landing. We has obviously been probing the ground and bought some of it back with him.
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Badgers make several visits to the plot, the best views at this camera near the east 'hole-in-the-hedge. The left image pre-dates the other two by about 5 hours, and is most likely a different Badger. On the right the visitor seems to have spotted the dark red glow of the IR light.
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3 Days later what looks like the same badger ambles into the site through the south entrance.
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Another 2 days on this Badger stops for a groom near the East entrance.
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We came across the local female Kestrel perched on the gutter of the living room. She wasn't pleased at our unexpected arrival and promptly flew off and we didn't expect to see her again.
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But no - her flight simply took her momentarily out of sight and then back over a roof ridge to land in the 1st floor gutter a few metres up and along from her previous perch. She spent several minutes staring at the ground from this vantage point before leaving to try another of her favourite perches.
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Once gone we continued the walk and came across the Kestrel perched on a support stay of our mains power pole, the first time we have seen her there. After a couple of minutes she flew from there onto one of her favourite hunting perches about 10m along the hedge - one of many footrests on a disused telephone pole ...
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... where she is a bit lower down than before, and on a more comfortable perch. This time she ignored us walking by 15m away and we didn't see her again for several days.
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The female Kestrel made a 16 minute visit that we became aware of at the time. So here is a mix of hand-held and locked focus camera pics. This set of 4 pics covers the whole event, a beautifully controlled landing, and defecating just before departure.
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The hand-held camera caught some of the more quirky moments of the Kestrel's visit
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The automatic camera caught moments in the several minute preen.
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A final portrait before she flew off.
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The afternoon sunshine brought out a few Hawker Dragonflies. This is a male Migrant Hawker Dragonfly perched on a blackberry stem, photographed from the side.
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Next morning this male Southern Hawker Dragonfly is hanging from a dead twig in the hedge, warming in the sunshine to start the days hunting.
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Glistening in the afternoon sunshine, this male Southern Hawker Dragonfly warms himself in the fitful sunshine
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The female Kestrel has made visits around and inside the site this week. Here she landed on the meadow post - stared intently at the ground around her for about 5 minutes before diving down out of sight.
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Another of her favourite hunting perches is the nearby 11kV power cables.
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A juvenile male Green Woodpecker probes the ground.
Although their favourite food is Ants, any small invertebrate will do!
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Over 40 minutes the automatic camera at the meadow post recorded visits first from a juvenile Green Woodpecker, then a Juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker, and finally probably the same Green Woodpecker, this time his beak not encrusted with mud. Even allowing for the GSW hanging from the edge, it is clear how much bigger the Green Woodpecker is than the 'Great Spotted'.
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We think that this beautiful Tawny Owl made two visits to the post in five minutes.
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The reason for 2 visits seems to have been a failed attack - this moment appears to be an imminent launch but the Owl quickly returned with nothing.
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20 minutes later we spot one frame with this glowing eye among a series of unexplained camera triggers at the front of the house overnight. Its the Tawny Owl standing in the gutter over one of the front bay windows.
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Some of the Oxford Ragwort has timed it's growth to make a decent flowerhead before the Cinnabar Caterpillars ravage the plant! The Gatekeeper butterfly you see, not badly disguised here, is the dominant brown butterfly at the moment.
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A Peacock butterfly has his Elevenses on a teasel head. You can just see specks of pollen adhering to his double pipe proboscis.
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Two portraits of what we think are different male Reeve's Muntjac Deer. In the first pic one of the male's little 'tusks' is clearly visible.
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This visitor 2 hours later gives us a good view of his Antlers in Velvet, and his particularly dark facial mask.
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Several Dragonflies patrol various areas on warm days, but mostly too high to get decent photo. This female Migrant Hawker Dragonfly stopped on a head-height Purple Loosestrife flower long enough to get a photo. Dragonflies have no interest in flowers beyond somewhere to perch.
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Migrant Hawker Dragonflies seem to fly at lower temperatures than other Hawker species we see here. This female has caught something held in her folded legs, and is eating it 'on the wing' as they do. The insert is the insect on the right.
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A female Migrant Hawker Dragonfly sunning herself. Air temperature has been marginal for Odonata this week, and they all rest in the sunshine periodically to warm up.
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This juvenile Green Woodpecker spent 15 minutes visiting the Meadow Post. This juvenile is just starting to show adult markings for a male. From about 30 images we choose these moments to show you.
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We see several juvenile Great Spotted Woodpeckers visiting the peanut feeders for a quick high protein feed. These cages do block the Grey Squirrels, but this bird's long beak and slender head means that the cage is no barrier, and that's fine with us.
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What seems to be a regular individual juvenile Green Woodpecker visited the Meadow Post. A few minutes after his last visit to the post we see him on the ground some 10m away triggering the 'meadow camera'.
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We come across the female Kestrel hunting from a conifer at our east hedge. She finally got bored with us watching her and flew down the hedge and away.
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Green Woodpecker always look a bit grumpy (to us anthropomorphic humans). This juvenile spent a couple of minutes hanging from the edge of the meadow post.
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A juvenile Great Spotted Woodpecker also visits the meadow post, but prefers ...
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... this peanut feeder, where it currently appears every day. Here caught in two of the many positions used to gain access to those inconveniently imprisoned peanuts.
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A Southern Hawker Dragonfly buzzing around us stops for a few second on a clump of unripe blackberry fruits. The insects couldn't care less whether the fruit is ripe or not - it is a hunter and this is just 'any' perch.
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Migrant Hawker Dragonflies are smaller than most of the other Hawker species in the UK, but can fly at good speed, and perform the most amazing changes of speed and direction. The magnified insert is of the right hand image.
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At the edge of the farmer's undoubtedly insecticide drenched bean crop, we find just this one female Common Blue Damselfly. This insect is a hunter of midges and the like, and lays eggs in the ponds, so is probably less effected by the chemicals than Bees, Butterflies and moths.
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The fresh emergence of Brimstone Butterflies is upon us. This one has chosen a thistle flower for a tank-up.
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As the camera fires on this male Brimstone Butterfly he lifts off from the spike of Purple Loosestrife in the pond edge for this accurate montage.
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The male Brimstone Butterfly flies to a closer plant where we can see his proboscis deep in the flower.
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This Holly Blue Butterfly makes it's second generation for the year, before laying
eggs and making Pupae which hibernate through the winter to emerge as next
years first generation.
Even quite similar Butterfly species use a wide range of 1, 2 or 3 generations per
year, going through the winter as any of Egg, Caterpillar, Chrysalis or Adults.
The diversity is amazing - your couldn't plan it!
If you are interested in such stuff we recommend to you a 1991 book
'The Butterflies of Britain & Ireland' by Jeremy Thomas & Richard Lewington
ISBN 0-86318-591-6. It includes multi-sided illustrations of both sexes
different generations and variations, and timelines for each stage of development.
Looking this up on Amazon, EBay & Google (in 2021) shows used original hardback
copies for about UKP 7 inc. delivery, and that there is a revised edition
(2019) for about UKP 20 which we haven't seen so can't comment.
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A sighting of a male Holly Blue butterfly which has the top of the wings a blue rather than darker and black edged female.
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Exit from the house startled the female Kestrel, and it was soon threatening a Rook. But by the time the camera had found the action the tables had turned on the Kestrel, now being 'seen off' by the Rook.
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Next day the female Kestrel wasn't pleased to see us appear outside the south hedge, and made for the cover of an Ash tree growing in the hedge, where she made this nice silhouette.
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After the heavy rain, the softer ground has attracted the female Kestrel
back to one of her regular hunting perches. She can dive down onto an
area of 'maintained' grass to catch insects and worms.
After we pass she flew out of sight ...
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... and 10 minutes later from the other side of the pole we were surprised to see this MALE kestrel on the top of the same pole. By normal Kestrel standards he looks a little 'washed out' so we suspect that this is a new generation bird - possibly her son.
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Blackbirds are normally immaculate creatures, but has to be excused a little
dishevelment during a moult.
Seeing the light coloured feathers made us wonder whether this was a long
lived bird going grey. Average life is reported as 3.5 years but they have been
know to live to 20 years. But various sources all agree that birds do NOT 'go
grey' like humans do, but worn feathers can assume this greyish
appearance.
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Outside the kitchen we last year cut down a 5 metre hedge that was beginning to thrash against the top of the house. This Grey Squirrel pauses for a moment on a piece of the cut wood.
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A face to face encounter between 2 Grey Squirrels. No animosity showing here.
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An Aerial Grey Squirrel leaping across the sky to the right?
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Our lovely male Pheasant seems suddenly to have a shorter and thinner tail. Eyes open for the 'discarded' feathers!
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2 days later we see the inevitable - a most definitely 'tail challenged' male pheasant.
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The 2020 Olympics (in 2021) were in progress when we obtained these two images,
so here we could not resist concocting this accurately positioned montage of a
Grey Squirrel doing a 'vault' over the stone.
The only snag is that the two pics are 20 minutes apart with other images (with
no squirrel in them) in between!
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While testing some camera lens configurations over a quarter of an hour in and out of the door 10m from this tree, this Grey squirrel simply lazed unconcerned through the whole affair. How to relax!
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A Brown Hawker Dragonfly perches on a piece of dead wood high above a hedge.
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Another sighting of a Gatekeeper Butterfly enjoying one of the thousands of Blackberry flowers now offering their nectar and at the same time pollinating the flowers for us to harvest the fruit in the autumn.
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A Hawker Dragonfly (we are not confident of the species) flies by us ...
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... and suddenly swerves upward to catch an insect in the 'net' made with the legs
before flying back the other way.
An unbroken sequence at 10 frames per second - Dragonflies can manoeuvre incredibly
quickly.
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Here we see the Hawker Dragonfly missing a catch in this accurate montage with both Dragonfly and insect moving downwards at 10 fps. This first version arrows the intended prey ...
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... while this tighter crop shows more detail including the Dragonflies legs extending into a 'catch-net' and then closing after failure, both events lasting no more than 100mS (tenth of a second)
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This Fox makes a stealthy entrance through the south hedge in the small hours.
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2 days later, shortly after sunrise, possibly the same fox meanders past the camera. The way the mix of IR and daylight catches the eyes produces some interesting effects
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The female Kestrel chose our patch for an hour's hunting.
First 'seen' flying over the meadow post, then spotted by the humans in the
orchard, flies 100m to conifers overlooking the meadow - she seemingly likes this type
of conifer, and is finally caught landing on the kitchen bird table, possibly with prey hidden
from us in her claws.
The image on the right shows that some feathers types in her tail are not
normal tail feathers. 2 years ago the same bird had one abnormally coloured
tail feather so we named her 'Lady Grey Feather'.
None of these tail abnormalities seem to bother her in the slightest.
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We have no record of seeing any Raptors at this sight before this moment of the
female Kestrel landing - possibly to catch a rodent on the ground. We never got
to see her claws or what was on the mound before she arrived - the montage looks
nice as we have spread it out here, but in fact the bird landed directly over
the wing-spread image so there may be a rodent hidden underneath.
You can again see the abnormal tail feathers.
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Juvenile Great Tits cluster on the perch outside the kitchen to wait for a feed. Here Mum or Dad arrives with another beakful.
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Four juvenile Great Tits serendipitously evenly spaced along the Kitchen perch.
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This more mature juvenile Great Tit, now feeding itself, seems have picked up a ball of mud and now has to extract the seeds stuck in it.
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Down in the undergrowth, slimy passion in the morning from this pair of snails.
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On the grass in the meadow, togetherness, Wood Pigeon Style.
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Up in the sky this Red Kite is flying some 50m away.
This represents less than one second of flight.
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This year seems to have been exceptional for Small White Butterflies with dozens at
a time fluttering over the meadow.
Perhaps they like the farmers bean crop!
Here 4 of them spiralling upwards in the sunshine in a fluttering courtship ritual.
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The four Small White Butterflies quickly split into 2 pairs - this is a montage of one of the pairs now fluttering downwards in close formation, the male (above) casting his shadow on the female.
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