Archived & Upcoming Images of the Day
'In the field' it can be hard to tell apart female Beautiful Demoiselles and Banded Demoiselles. But the wings colours and other details in these images leads us to believe that these two female Demoiselles are, Here, a Beautiful Demoiselle ...
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... and here a female Banded Demoiselle.
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This Fox youngster has a staring look because it is so unusual to see a fox with such tiny pupils. It's still 4 hours to sunset and the Fox is looking west towards the sun.
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From the end of the Meadow path we spot this Fox along the path.
This montage of two moments shifts the images of the Fox standing still.
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The Round Pond (known to have a serious leak) doesn't have a trace of
open water left as the fox on the right seems to have just discovered.
Several litres a of water get consumed from the trough every day in this hot weather.
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The first Ruddy Darter Dragonfly this year - this one is a male
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Here we catch a Ruddy Darter Dragonfly landing on this plant remnant and swivelling to face the sun in about one second. Read this pair of images right to left.
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Hawker Dragonflies have been flashing past us for a few days, and finally this one stopped long enough to ID as a female Migrant Hawker.
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This juvenile male Green Woodpecker hasn't quite got his landing technique perfected. The bird has overshot the easy to grip edge of the top of the Meadow Post, and is skidding along the top. The next frame half-a-second later is accurately montaged at the bottom left telling he toppled off the top and started a dive downwards - undoubtedly controlled by those gorgeous feathers.
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The adult male Green Woodpecker perches elegantly on the top of the Meadow Post, while presumable 'his' youngster hangs on the side.
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Two Green Woodpeckers, Dad on the left pouring water from his beak into his throat. The male is partly obscured by the (we think female) juvenile.
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A juvenile male Green Woodpecker stops for his portrait. We think these birds look almost primeval.
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The 'top' side of a Gatekeeper Butterfly.
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From this withering Oxeye daisy a Small Skipper Butterfly collects the still generous bounty.
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This Fox, with very scrawny tail, walks up to the Round Pond trough, takes a drink before carrying on their way.
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Fox youngster and adult share water from the Duck Pond dish.
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About an hour later this young Fox is hunting at the Woodland site perhaps 80m away.
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As the day draws to a close The Reeves' Muntjac Fawn is called from their day-time hiding place (this year none of previous years locations - we don't know where) to get a lick-over from Mum.
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Mum and Fawn Reeves' Muntjac Deer quench their thirsts at the nearly
empty Duck Pond water dish.
Topping this up is a twice a day 'chore' in this hot dry weather, but gets
rewarded by pics of the wildlife being grateful for it.
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A female Reeves' Muntjac Deer grooming the places you forget she has. At the top right of the frame and out of focus - still worth a look.
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Ripe Cherries in late June are not typical here, but this male Blackbird has found one.
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This Hare is quite near the centre of our patch. The position momentarily caught in the camera flash really emphasises the enormous length of this creatures rear legs!
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This Robin (3 views of the same event) has caught a moth. The bird didn't swallow it, so we assume that it is for a youngster.
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Young Foxes are exploring their world.
Does the smell of Rabbit excite them already?
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Rabbit mother (The WWW tells us that dad doesn't do anything to help) with 3 kittens enjoy a spot of afternoon warmth at the Round Mound.
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This Buzzard makes a landing on the Meadow Post.
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This Red-kite was making good use of a thermal generated by the early sunshine, gradually rising so high the outline blended with the haze. The primary feathers (the long ones at the wing tip - normally 5 on Kites according to our ID book) are down to 4 on the left and only 2 on the right as the bird moults. Most birds moult in this piecemeal way so that they can carry on hunting or whatever. A few birds like waterfowl completely lose the ability to fly and move to large areas of water for safety while vulnerable.
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Tawny Owl visits are a bit sparse at the moment.
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This Tawny Owl seems to be performing a 'touch-and-go' on the Meadow post. These two pics just 500mS (half a second) apart.
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One night saw several sightings of this male Roe Deer
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A Musk-Mallow flower.
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A Field Scabious - one of dozen in a ditch that escape the Farms mowers.
The rather nasty name derives from is early folk medicine where it was
used to treat skin conditions. On the same web search we find a much more
pleasing common name of Pincushion Flower.
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A Lime tree 20m from the house is now in full flower. Any position on our patch vaguely down wind of this tree is suffused with the beautiful aroma we wish we could share with you.
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A patch of Daylilies under the Willow tree at the SW corner of the main pond are finally closing their account until next year.
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A male Black-tailed Skimmer Dragonfly.
It is a medium sized Dragonfly with body length about 47mm.
The Blue back is called pruinescence - a sort of powder that gets rubbed off
by contact with foliage and during mating.
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The same male Black-tailed Skimmer Dragonfly now flown to a Yellow Flag Iris leaf frond
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A female Common Blue Damselfly shows how well their apparently gaudy appearance blends well with the foliage.
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This male Green Woodpecker is at the Meadow site. It's a bit uncanny how often Green Woodpeckers are looking upwards.
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Left to right we see 2 Juvenile Green Woodpeckers and then the adult male.
NOT a montage.
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We last saw a female Green Woodpecker at the beginning of June, but the male and 2 juveniles appear fairly regularly on various cameras.
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Male and juvenile Green Woodpeckers are currently regular visitors.
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A pair of Ringlet butterflies mating on a leaf.
More Ringlets to look forward to next year!
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Appearances of Painted Lady Butterflies continue like no other year we can remember. They mostly look rather 'tatty' now.
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Our first sighting of a Gatekeeper Butterfly.
This one just wouldn't open her wings for a more 'standard' photo.
A week later the whole site was delightfully 'awash' with this species!
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A Red Admiral Butterfly.
The start of July has seen so many butterflies of various species
along the path across the Meadow walking along it is sometimes
like something out of a fairy-tale or s Disney movie.
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An early start for this Fox - its still about 2 hours until 'dark'.
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This Fox at the Meadow site couldn't care less about the clover.
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The Fox circles round to the Duck Pond water dish to take a drink, before continuing their hunt.
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This young Fox already has that 'feared hunter' look.
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On BBC Springwatch it was fun to see a Red Squirrel plucking at fir cone and carrying it off to feed. Here is the next stage illustrated by one of 'our' Grey Squirrels - rip it to bits to get at the seeds!
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This is an adult Fox with two cubs clustered around the water dish at Duck Pond. From the darkness top left a pair of glowing eyes is being watched by the adult Fox. The spacing of the eyes suggests another Fox, but the eyes moved out of frame to the left and didn't re-appear.
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This Sparrowhawk touches down on the edge of the Kitchen Bird table.
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As this two Wood Pigeon try to fit onto the limited area of the
top of the Meadow Post, we see that the brilliant sunlight has
reduced the bird's iris to a tiny short slot.
The more usual Iris is a 'droopy' appearance of various sizes.
Before ID books being mostly selected photographs rather than drawings, and the ability
to scan hundreds of photo in the internet, we always found that the iris was illustrated
with a Round iris, even though in the living bird it is round only when fully open
in poor light. We suspect that illustrations were made from taxidermy creations
(with glass eyes) or dead specimens.
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A broken line of bits of cloud is accompanied by a pattern of streamers visibly
streaming down from the clouds.
No explanation, but we liked the effect.
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This random scatter of disconnected small clouds caught the eye.
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The dazzling sea of Oxeye Daisies is here at it's peak - almost the next day the blazing sun takes its toll as the heads start to form seeds.
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The perhaps 1 acre field adjoining our north hedge seem to have been left as some~sort of set-aside. Well it certainly has some interesting patches of flowering thistles.
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Field Bindweed has been a regular summer accompaniment for the whole 35 years we have been here. The first occurrence we remember was when we had dug out Round Pond, and before installing matting and butyl liner, thousands of these flowers decorated the sea of brown clay. The seeds must have been dormants metres below ground level for decades.
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So pristine this must be a new emergence of a Comma Butterfly.
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A Red Admiral Butterfly basking in the sunshine calling on a Black Poplar tree trunk.
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This pair of mating Green-veined White butterflies seem to have blundered into a spider thread and got stuck. There was no spider about to finalise their capture, so a quick photo and then a bit of careful untangling releases them to fly away. Interfering with nature has it's drawbacks - are any spiderlings now desperate for food?
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Several sightings of (probably always the same) Little Owl have continued.
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Tawny Owl(s) also continue nigh-time visits.
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A male Common Damselfly, but this time a young one showing the typical colouration of the immature
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This is a female Common Blue Damselfly - the Blue form of the 3 possibilities.
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This male Common Blue Damselflies caught in flight
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Running this camera at 20 fps caught this male Common Blue Damselfly leave his perch only to fly back to perch only a few millimetres away.
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Possibly our last Photo of a Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly this year, in this case a female
with the iridescent body. This and the Banded Demoiseele the the largest UK species
with body length about 45mm (1.75 inches)
Not a single Banded Demoiselle seen this year so far, and probably now
absent this year.
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At last we are starting to see Damselflies in more respectable numbers. These are small insects about 33mm long (1.3 inches) and very slender. If they keep still they blend wonderfully with the vegetation. At the moment they are all Common Blue Damselflies, but Odonata vary in colour with age, and abdominal marking with sex. Further, Common Blue females comes in three different colour variations.
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Woodpeckers and Pigeons generally get along just fine by ignoring one another.
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This male Green Woodpecker probing the wet ground around the sunken bird-bath.
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Near the summer solstice the house throws a shadow over the meadow photo site. Here a male Green Woodpecker gazes up at the still bright sky.
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This elegant bird is a juvenile Green Woodpecker. The red tinge below the eye suggests that this is a male, but we have failed to confirm that this sexual diagnostic applies to juveniles as well as adults.
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For about 80 minutes this Jay made multiple visits to the Kitchen window perch.
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The Jay about to touch down at the Kitchen perch
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3 views of the same Robin displaying their emerging red breast.
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An adult Robin with the 'full set' of red feathers.
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This Tawny Owl manages a majestic arrival.
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A short visit by one of the Tawny Owls.
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Reeves' Muntjac Deer Fawn (nearest) and Mum make an idyllic portrait at the Woodland site.
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Reeves' Muntjac Fawn walks up to Mum at the side of Round Pond.
"Is the milk Bar open yet?"
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The water in the Duck Pond now requires a real effort to reach. But many individuals prefer this water to the 'clean' water in the nearby dish.
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Mum Reeves' Muntjac Deer takes a selfie at the Meadow Site. It doesn't look as if she has picked up her Fawn yet - it is only about 20 minutes after sunset.
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This Sparrowhawk stopped on the Kitchen Perch
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In the afternoon sunshine this Sparrowhawk stops on the Kitchen perch for a preen.
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Two visits by this Sparrowhawk in about 8 minutes.
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One or more Sparrowhawks have returned to attacking Tits on the peanut feeders. This is at the North side of the house. At the south side this, or another, Sparrowhawk flashes by the windows a few times a day, intent on birds at the feeder outside the study.
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This young Robin is starting to develop the first few red feathers on their breast.
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An unusually clear pic of this male Chaffinch flying low over the Hedge bottom.
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This male Blackbird has just finished a morning bath. Now its time for a good preen which will remove much of the water.
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