Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
A female Green Woodpecker stands at the log at the Meadow site and gazes upwards.
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Green Woodpeckers seem to be very active when on the top of the Meadow Post.
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A little size comparison exercise. Green Woodpeckers are quite a bit bigger than the
more common (in general - just not this year here) Great Spotted
Woodpecker.
Left to Right:- Male Green, Female Green, Juvenile Great Spotted (which is a similar size to the adult).
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Two rather different aspects of the same male Green Woodpecker.
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The male Reeves' Muntjac Deer with antlers in velvet spend a few minutes foraging by the now much water-depleted Round Pond.
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20 minutes later the Deer has arrived at the Duck Pond where he walks down the bank for a drink. This pond doesn't leak but evaporation takes it's toll. It is topped up by water pumped from a water-butt with a catchment area about a third of the roof, but we will need a long wet period to really raise the level.
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The fluffed up male Green Woodpecker is using his tail as a 'third leg'
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A male Green Woodpecker on the meadow post. Probably 2 different visits 15 minutes apart (right then left).
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The Hare then set about an 8 minute long wash-and-brush-up session.
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Another moment from the 8 minute groom
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Finally deciding to depart, the hare lolloped across the concrete towards the grass outside our east hedge.
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The Hare decided to go through the hedge into our patch, but surprisingly reappeared
at the same place, only to scamper away, mostly hidden by the uncut grass, to
vanish around the North East corner into the crop or a 'proper' entrance to our
patch.
Young hares can undoubtedly walk straight through uncut pig-net, and this
hare may remember when it didn't matter where you walked through!
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An early Monday morning walk came across this Hare standing on the Farm Road aligned with a 10 mph speed limit sign. We stopped still to watch from about 50 metres away.
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The Hare left the concrete road and started an amble towards the camera ...
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... this montage continuing with a repeat of the same image Right and here left.
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The land by the Farm Road has shrunk so that the step up is now about 30cm (a foot) high.
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A reliable patch of Rose of Sharon appears again this year. We love the generous sized (perhaps 8cm across) and busily stamened flowers.
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White Convolvulus flower appear each year along one side of the east-west path across the centre of the meadow. This photo also caught a Marmalade Hover-fly making the most of the nectar.
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Patches of Ragwort pop up at random over the meadow. We expect the Cinnabar Caterpillars to soon appear, and then the vivid red and black moths that emerge.
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A few times we have come across this distinctly under-sized Grey squirrel at the base of a young Lombardy Poplar. Here they are systematically stripping unripe Wheat heads of their seeds The Squirrel left as we walked down the concrete track, and the insert shows the remains of their efforts.
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These two young Grey Squirrels already have one food supply sorted - always check this hedge bottom.
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An adult Grey Squirrel spread-eagled on a sunny branch in the south hedge couldn't
care less about the 2 humans 10 metres away. "This is the life!".
If this is a 'mum' squirrel, we completely understand her point of view.
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This Red Kite glided lazily overhead.
These 16 images are accurately montaged at about 7 frames per second,
so about 2 and a half seconds of flight.
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A detail from the centre of the above.
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This is our first sighting of an Emperor Dragonfly for 3 years.
Positioning is accurate at about 7 fps.
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The middle pic in the montage at a more easily identifiable scale.
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A Brown Hawker Dragonfly veering upwards to avoid the cap wearer
This camera-lens pairing is a little faster at 8 fps.
The black at the bottom left isn't a privacy thing - following the insect just didn't
catch the cap-wearers head!
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Brown Hawker Dragonflies really live up to their name - brown bodies and brown wings really do look 'brown' in flight even at a glimpse.
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We have both male and female Green Woodpeckers visiting the Meadow Post. This is the female with a black stripe under her eye.
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This is the male with Red outlined with black under the eye.
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Here the female landed and within half a second was already calling.
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The above pair of images were recorded about half a second apart and we couldn't resist making this silly animated GIF to show the effect.
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This Hare just inside the East hedge gap seems to be biting off the leafy part of this solo weed on the otherwise barren ground.
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This Hare about 100m away from us across the south margin decides to depart and gave a nice little illustration of 'high jump' as they left.
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An adult Fox near the south hedge gap, very much on the hunt.
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Three days later the same or another adult Fox inspects the leavings at the hedge bottom site.
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"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
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3 immaculate Wood Pigeons check over the Meadow feeding site.
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This year we have two major patches of Oxeye daisies - this one by the Meadow camera (far end in this pic) and another near the north edge of the meadow.
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The wonderful intricacies of a Thistle Flower-head.
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The Blackberry plants are all starting to flower.
Flower petals range from white to the deep pink we see here.
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This Fir Cone appeared a few days earlier, and finally this Grey Squirrel has decided that it is worth the trouble to rip apart for the seeds within.
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The hot sun beats down on the bird table in the summer months. This Squirrel spent at least 10 minutes hanging over the bird table soaking in the warmth and falling in and out of a drowse.
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From not having seen any Great Tits for months, we now have at least 5
Great Tit youngsters feeding around the Kitchen Window.
Where's the fifth? Just the tail appears below.
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Both female and male Green Woodpeckers are visiting the site - most usually caught on camera on the Meadow Post. This is the female - no red stripe under the eye.
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Here the male Green Woodpecker with red stripe under the eye.
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Giving an indication impression of the actual size of creatures in photographs is something that doesn't seem to have been solved. Here are a Green Woodpecker and a Blackbird at the same scale.
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An adult Fox stops by the Duck Pond for a drink. The image nearest the centre looks particularly fierce.
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Two trail cameras catch a Fox time-stamped 2 minutes apart (we try to keep them accurate to a minute) we have to assume that between a visit to the Round Pond (left) and passing the Duck Pond the Fox captured an unwary bird, from it's size we guess a Rook or Jackdaw.
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A pristine fox, we think a growing cub from our first earth, stares suspiciously at the low-glow infrared lamp.
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This female Roe Deer spent about 40 minutes wandering around the site before exiting at the same point she arrived
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After midnight on the same night we see the female Roe Deer for 10 minutes.
The final shot looks amazingly similar to the start of the sequence above - while building
the montage we initially thought we had made a mistake - but it is a genuine second moment.
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20 minutes later the female Roe Deer is on the concrete access track exiting the hedge at the left. There is an animal-worn trail through the hedge here, but the barbed wire and Pig-net fence may be passable for smaller creatures but not for a Roe deer without the space to make a running leap. So she has probably entered the ditch out of sight of the camera, and chosen to cross back to the track at this conveniently sparse point.
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A second day photographing flying insects starts with this Meadow Brown Butterfly.
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Our 'won't fly for us' Poplar Hawk Moths have been supplemented by 2 or 3 Eyed Hawk-moths. Here you see the trick appearance of the 'eyes' used to frighten off an attacker.
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The Eyed Hawk-moth was a bit reluctant to fly for us, but we got a few
frames which actually had a moth in them.
Here is a montage of two flights, the right image shows the underside of the moth,
and the left the top of the moth (with the eyes) because the moth is flying inverted.
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The catch also included a few Small Elephant Hawk-moths. Here is a montage of this colourful not-so-little delight.
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The Burnished Brass Moth has patches of iridescent scales that really do shine brightly when the light and viewer angles are appropriate. Here we got lucky in-flight.
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Here the Burnished Brass Moth is flying upside down - we often see images
of insects flying inverted.
To small insects the viscosity of air must be a bit like Humans in water -
the sense of up and down becomes blurred.
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Here is a Burnished Brass Moth sitting quietly in the standard insect 'Pill-box' The camera was angled to catch the 'brass' iridescence at its maximum, but without any 'photo fiddling'.
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Upon release the Burnished Brass Moth chose a bit of stem
lying of the ground. Here the shiny areas are just a dull green,
the same appearance as seen in many ID books.
Why would anybody call it 'Burnished Brass'?
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The Moth trap catch this time was something between 200 and 300 moths - a more
typical number than the thousand or so a few days earlier.
This is a Scorched Wing Moth caught in two moments of flight.
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A Brimstone MOTH - in its own way just as beautiful as it's namesake Butterfly.
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The Peppered Moth (on the large side for 'ordinary' moths) has this wonderful intricate pattern of black spots on white background.
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After we released one of the Peppered moths he chose a desiccated Blackberry leaf to hide on. The camouflage really works rather well.
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After the finish of the Beautiful Demoiselle Damselflies season we didn't expect to see any Banded Demoiselles, but unexpectedly came across the single individual male. He obliged with several elegant flights across our little photo-stage for us before we put him back where we found him.
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3 moments of flight constructed into an attractive montage.
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This Spring's dearth of Butterflies since the glut of Orange-tip Butterflies is rather alarming. The only butterfly we see in more than one per hour is the Speckled Wood. Here are a couple of photos taken in our refurbished insects-in-flight camera kit
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A young Grey Squirrel already practising leaping at some corvid just out of frame.
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And its not just one - here we have Double Trouble.
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After months of absence a male Pheasant returns.
It doesn't take long for a Grey Squirrel to attack.
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This young Rook makes it very clear to the rather depressed looking parent that it wants F O O D !
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We don't know where they nested, but a family (well so far one youngster and
'Dad) of Great Spotted Woodpeckers has appeared. This juvenile spent several
minutes at the kitchen perch and bird-table making so many moves that we used
separate cameras to try to catch the action.
This first is the automatic camera at the kitchen window being manually fired ...
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... and this the Kitchen 'grab camera.
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Here, within 20 minutes, is most probably Dad on the Meadow post some 30 metres away.
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Chickweed is just a 'weed'.
But that doesn't mean it can't have beautiful flowers.
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The Fox-and-Cubs are now starting their flowering in earnest. Gorgeous little blobs of sunshine.
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This pair of Dog Roses on the same branch show very different conditions - one freshly open and the other sun-bleached. We think that the lack of fertilising insects means the flowers stay open for longer, giving the UV from the sun time to do it's damage.
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An hour after dark - what's for 'breakfast'.
The naming of meals for nocturnal animals / night-working humans seems to quite a muddle!
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A new Trail Cam at the back of the main pond catches this Fox on the hunt as darkness descends
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One of the Fox Cubs alone at the Woodland site.
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Poplar hawk moths are big and take a while to warm up for flight, providing
a chance to get this portrait 'in the hand' 'on the thumb'.
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These two pink apparitions are respectively a Small Elephant Hawk-moth (big by
average moth standards) and the 'normal (bigger)' Elephant Hawk-moth.
Although they share the same strange mix of drab green and purple pink their
markings are distinct.
We wanted to know whether these two species were separately evolved (convergent evolution)
or one evolved from the other. A hopeful paper at
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9021678/
contains lots of detail, but without technical background in genomics
the various charts don't divulge much. There is no 'summary' to help.
If any expert finds this and can help, we would be delighted to
update this entry.
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Trying to get a pic of the Caterpillar damage caught this pic of one of the more open areas of leaf canopy that just catches our fancy.
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Morning light streams about 50 metres into the woodland.
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What's going to happen on this new day?
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First glimpsed probing soil in a recently mowed grass path, the male Green Woodpecker spent several minutes on the top of the Meadow Post. Spotting him on the CCTV caused a stampede to the room with the camera covering this post to fire off lots more pics (well over 100) of this event. Here are an assortment of pics taken in the 12 minutes of the birds vigorous activity.
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