Saturday 6 November 2010

Last weekend

blue tit

Yep, I love blue tits, but I especially love this one below.

This is my favourite little bird, the coal tit.  Isn’t it tiny?

coal tit 3

coal tit

woodpecker1 

And I finally got a photo of the woodpecker which wasn’t blurred, though as the light disappeared the rest were really grainy.

Sunday 10 October 2010

Quickie post

Well, I took LOADS of photos this morning but most of them were blurred.  Duh!  Must try harder.  I had some great shots of nuthatches, blue tits, coal tits, marsh tits, a jay and a great spotted woodpecker but they’re all total rubbish, so have been consigned to the Recycle bin.

Here are the few I salvaged.

Great tit on feeder crop

coal tit crop

agaric 1

fungi 29000

fungi 28000

frilly fungus

I love these.  Nature’s so clever.  They were really frilly and I thought at first they were dead leaves because that’s just what they look like.

Tuesday 31 August 2010

Peckforton and Birds of Prey

Yesterday, I went with my son and his future wife to visit the venue of their wedding, which will be in June next year.

This is it.

peckforton-castle-wedding-video

PenfordCastle5-vi 

Pretty impressive, huh?

As part of the ceremony, they’ll be having a Birds of Prey display and some of the birds were out on their perches yesterday, so I took a few photos.

hawk 2

vulture

red kite 7

hawk

golden eagle

Sunday 22 August 2010

More photos

More photos from Rixton today, but didn’t have a lot of success, unfortunately.

white 2 flower

Love this little Common Blue

blue2

Small Tortoiseshell

smtort3

More peacocks – lots of ‘em

pc1

Look at the hairs on this!

pc hairy

peac1

Another nymph – wish I knew which type of dragonfly it is.  I was surprised to see a nymph so late in August.  Not very sharp, though because it was a distance away.

another nymph

Common Blue Damselfly

blue damsel 1

Blue tailed damselfly

blue tailed damsel wings

Female damselfly but I can’t work out which one from the photos I’ve seen.

female damsel 5

Another female damselfly.

female damsel2

I got a red eyed female, too but it’s not very sharp.

female damsel 7

I think this is a female Common Darter.

dfly2 

These are male Common Darters

dfly4

 

dfly branch 2

dfly branch 4 b 

Saw loads of Ruddy darters but I decided I already have way too many photos of them!

dl clock 1

dlclock 3

Giant Shrooms!!

large shrooms

Thursday 19 August 2010

Hunting Fungi

Today’s pics.  Not much to show cos it started raining not too long after we arrived and we spent way too much time waiting for the kingfisher to come back to the hide – which didn’t happen!

So, I concentrated on fungi – one of my big loves.  Not that I know much about them but I find them fascinating.

fungus 2

fungus 11

fungus 3

fungus 5

fungus 7

fungus 15

fungus 16

fungus 19

fungus 20

fungus 22

fungus 23

fungus 24

Pretty cool for something with such a ‘bad’ name as fungus???   Don’t you think?  Isn’t nature amazing?

There be dragons in Cheshire…

Went photographing again yesterday and got a few reasonable shots.

Darters are pretty easy to photograph because they land on the ground or steps in front of you and seem to love wooden railings – any wood, in fact.  We did see a hawker, but it was far more elusive and there were quite a few really big dragonflies but we only saw them passing – frustrating!

darter ex

red darter 4

red darter5

yellow darter good

blue damselfly

LOVE the fact that you can see the hairs on these, even though you can’t see them with the naked eye.

peacock angled

peacock on yellow 

small heath close

white 3

white

bfly unk

bee ex

Look at the ‘face’ on this one – it looks really SCARY!  I thought it was a waps but looking at this, I’m now wondering if it’s another species of bee, like the one above.  I actually found this one by accident, when trying to catch a small butterfly and couldn’t resist shooting it.

waps 2 

Isn’t this HORRIBLE??????  I have a thing about fungi, though, so I think I’m going to take lots of photos of ‘em when I find ‘em – as long as it looks interesting, lol.

stinkhorn 

shroom 2