Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
Some days we see a Sparrowhawk flashing by the conservatory window a few times an hour. The size, speed and behaviour tell us that it is a Sparrowhawk, but sexing at their blurred speed is impossible. We know that a female is a regular visitor, but here was see a male perched outside the kitchen. So we may therefore be seeing a 'pair' of Sparrowhawks hunting our peanut feeders.
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We watched this Rook chasing the Kestrel for about a minute as the action
gradually moved towards us. As the Kestrel approached the 11kV cables we expect
the chase to go by them, but the Kestrel chooses to land on the furthest cable
(bottom) and the Rook unexpectedly lands on the middle cable where they both
spent several minutes thereafter.
This final sequence covers about 1 second all
accurately positioned.
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Teasel heads make an important contribution to winter diet of both mammals and birds. From somewhere nearby this Grey Squirrel has already found (and possibly bitten off) a head and has for some reason taken it up onto the Kitchen bird table to wheedle out the seeds.
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This Grey Squirrel delicately holds what it is eating in their paws. The food looks like a piece of old fruit.
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"Quite an appetising 'plate' - I'll look it over while scratching my back."
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As the day begins this female Reeves' Muntjac Deer ambles
through the hedge gap (near left edge), down into the ditch and up into
the orchard. On the far left you can see the glow of the eyes of the
attentive male quietly following her, shown on the right 20 second later.
Reeves' Muntjac Deer don't have a 'Rut' season - the 'girls' come into heat
in any season. Lucky 'boys'. Fawns can appear even in the middle of winter.
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This is a well trodden route in and out of our patch. Here a Badger lumbers their way down the still dry ditch and up into the orchard.
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Twee moment of the week is this pristine Grey squirrel ensconced in a bed of fallen leaves nibbling food from their paws.
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This site tends to get the food mixed with mud - so this Squirrel picks up the mud and nibbles off the stuck-on corn.
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Talk about Lartigue's 'decisive moment' - this Great tit is perhaps 3mm from actual landing on the stone!
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A Vividly marked Great Tit shows the lovely glossy feathers over the head.
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A Red Kite glides by.
Accurately spaced over about three-quarters of a second.
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At the meadow site seven Fieldmice (Wood Mice) leap about in the night.
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Grey Squirrels seem to adore apples.
This one is 'chiselling' out the rotted side of this one.
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This Grey Squirrel either prefers or put-up-with' cooked potato peel.
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The Sparrowhawk makes another lightening fast pass over the kitchen perch/bird table/peanut feeder complex. The bird often circles the house several times a day to check all of the peanut feeders.
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Across our access track walks the female Reeves' Muntjac Deer, followed about a minute later by the male.
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100m away on the other side of the plot this male Reeves' Muntjac Deer pauses to scratch his muzzle with his hind hoof.
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A rare occurrence (and never before here that we can remember) a Tawny Owl lands on the bank of dried out Round Pond. The final moment sees the Owl staring up at the dark red glow of the Trail cams IR lamp.
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On the other side of the same midnight this Tawny Owl first landed on the kitchen window perch. A few minutes later what we think is the same Owl spends a few minutes on the meadow post.
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A single night sees most probably the same Owl make 3 visits to the Meadow post in 4 hours across midnight. In this first sequence the final pic shows the Owl staring intently at the meadow camera site where there are Fieldmice (Wood Mice) each night.
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From the camera point of view two untidy landings, but the Owl doesn't land for the camera.
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Part of the east hedge, now dominated by the trees inside the plot.
For scale - hedge is about 1.5 metres tall.
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We adore these intricate tapestries of leaf colours.
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Staghorn Sumac really turns a wonderful red as autumn progresses.
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A Green Shieldbug on the side of one of our storage bunkers.
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Next day we find one on the glass of the conservatory. You can see here that the brown patch at the rear is actually the tips of the mostly covered wings.
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After a brief sighting on the concrete access track over the CCTV, we later find this portrait of a Moorhen standing on the Kitchen Bird table.
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Here the Moorhen is licking corn out from under the perch clamped to the bird table.
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A major Roe Deer event during the morning of the Hunter's Full Moon starts with this sighting of 4 Roe Deer walking up the side of the access track. The first is just starting to enter through the hole in the netting. The next 2 are obvious and the last is more a pair of reflecting eyes brought up by a bit of moderate photo processing.
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This pond has a serious leak and for now provides a foraging area for all of the larger mammals, The white tray provides water that after several weeks most of the Deer and Badgers regularly use.
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Bye-bye
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Possibly the same Jay we saw last week continues to make visits.
Here they are standing on the fallen branch at the Woodland site.
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3 days later we see the Jay in an amazingly similar position.
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1 minute later the Jay has moved about 10 metres to the tree-stump, reaching down to catch the insect a few centimetres from the tip of the beak.
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A belated first sighting this year of a Ruddy Darter Dragonfly here, this male taking advantage of the warm concrete track.
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50 metres away we find this female Ruddy Darter Dragonfly on the sun-warned armrest an old bench seat.
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Hawthorn trees over the east hedge are turning to autumn colours and ripening their berries.
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We don't see many Rabbit in recent years. One reason is that the trees now shade out most of what used to be grass between the trees, and the meadow area is mostly wild plants. But rabbits still breed somewhere near - here this young Rabbit visited the Meadow feeding site.
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Another reason for the lack of Rabbits is the increasing activities of the Fox,
here carrying off another young Rabbit.
No - its NOT the Rabbit above - this photo was taken 2 days earlier.
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A pair of young Grey Squirrel sharing the food at the hedge bottom.
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Possibly the same pair of young Grey Squirrel 'play fighting'. The claws are folded and the mouth barely open. More of a wrestling match perhaps.
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These small apples are very hard, but this Grey squirrel thinks it is worth carrying this one away.
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We don't see many Jays here, but presumably this individual visited 3 days running (only
the first two visits shown here).
Don't get confused here, the pic on the left is on the tree-stump inside the woodland
while all the rest are on the Meadow Post. The right pair are half a second apart.
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These two pics taken half a second apart - the Jay probably lands a little too upright, and instead of falling forward did a little jump to gain balance.
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Sunshine really brings up the wonderful plumage of this Magpie.
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Plumage immaculate for the ravages of winter to come, this Great Tit is out looking for breakfast at the hedge bottom.
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A female Southern Hawker Dragonfly warming herself in the sunshine.
Soon only her ghost will haunt the hedge.
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Although the peak temperatures are dropping Common Darter Dragonflies still look for warm places (like this corrugated iron sheet).
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This over-mature Common Darter Dragonfly surprised us before 10 a.m. on the warm east wall of the house, in the sunshine and sheltered from a cold and fierce wind from the west.
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A Red Kite, this one with beautifully manicured feathers, glides overhead making an unusually large circle, hence the only slight change of orientation.
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A study in tail adjustments as this Red Kite flies past.
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The female Sparrowhawk makes visits to the Meadow Post about 25 minutes apart.
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Its not obvious in the montage, but more detail of the last image shows that it is pouring with rain, with water dripping from that fiercesome beak and water drops clinging to her tail.
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At the kitchen window as it is only just getting light at 7 a.m. this Sparrowhawk seems to have landed on the bird table avoiding the sense beam, and is now launching back in to flight.
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Some polystyrene foam put out for recycling attracts this female Migrant Hawker Dragonfly to lay her eggs in it. The texture must be similar to that of suitable pond weeds. Her ovipositor is sticking vertically downwards 2 segments up from the two flappy bits (anal appendages). The ovipositor was repeatedly pushed down hard into the plastic foam were we assume an egg was deposited.
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Here is more detail of another egg deposition.
We didn't want her wasting her eggs on this fruitless venture, so chased her away.
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This photo (again on polystyrene foam - what's the attraction?) is a Common Darter Dragonfly.
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Here she is now on a Hawthorn leaf.
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"Just testing the apple for Ripeness"?
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"Just ripe enough!"
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Another 'perfect' apple?
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Here a couple of young Grey Squirrel, possibly siblings, share the food left only a few minutes earlier.
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About 3 metres up the SW corner of the house this Blue Tit is industriously pulling at what looks like Spider silk in a hole broken into the brickwork by one of the many BT / Openreach 'fixtures' we have suffered over the years. The bird eventually moved out of sight into the wall :-(
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We don't ever remember hearing a Great Spotted Woodpecker calling, so were surprised to find this adult female perched on an 11kV cable making soft short squeaks every couple of seconds. The middle image shows her beak slightly open and eyes closed as she makes the call. The WWW assures us that this is normal behaviour that we would not hear through double glazed windows or would have recognised over the CCTV microphone. These 3 pics are at about 7fps - about 140mS apart left to right.
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The weather has been quite cold and rarely sunny, but we did find this Green-veined White butterfly feeding on the still flowering mint plants.
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Each year we get a few out-of-season flowers.
This Convolvulus flower has definitely overslept.
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Rose plants have for several years thrived by growing up through the lodgepole pine at the east end of the row. Now the multiple flowers has become a sea of red Hips.
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