That is, it on the homeward journey now only 184 more shots to have completed the year in photography. What knows may turn up for me to photograph, I hope there are as many surprises in this half of the year as there has been in the first half, so many shots I would never have dreamed of getting, so lets hope I can surprise myself as well as you.
This month started off a bit wet, but the last week of this blog has turned out to be a warm and wonderful week, let us hope it continues for the rest of the summer, but with the occasional wet day to save me getting the hose out.
How many of us go to a garden centre with the intention of buying just the plants you want and end up bringing home something you have not seen before or had any intention of buying. Above is one of those purchases, I just saw it and with my love of the Primula family I knew I just had to have it. It is called “The Red Hot Poker Primrose” and though I am not the head gardener in this household I hope I can get a real good patch of these established over the next couple of years. According to SWMBO my father in law had one many many years ago, but back then I did not know a Dandelion from a Daisy, older (a lot) and wiser (a bit) these days.
A rare visitor to our garden but always when it does come it goes to this particular Pyracanthia bush, which makes it hard to get a good shot of as it is in the narrowest part of the garden and I have to take it through the double glazing in our bedroom. It is of course as the shot shows you, a Blackcap and the male of the species, the female has a more brown cap and it was there before the male but I didn’t manage to catch a decent image of it . A very shy bird that any movement and it is off like a shot, so pleased I at least got this glimpse of it.
I really intend to get some use out of the photographers light box I got on Fathers Day and this is my first real attempt at a still life.
We go for our daily walk and I for one seem to ignore the common sights in life, walked 100 yards down the road today to where our communal bins are and on the way back up to the house just picked up these different grasses that had seed heads on. The variety of shapes and colours, if you really study them, are beautiful and these are all around us. If you live in a city, town or countryside, they are there, so its well worth while just take your time and enjoy the pleasures such simple things in life that can be seen.
I do not know the reason why, but large snails are just something we very rarely see in our garden, the habitat is right for them damp areas with lots of vegetation for them so it is weird. So when the wife saw this on the path it just had to be shot for today. She was on her way out and told me she had put a glass on it as she couldn’t pick it up. I placed it on some wood and waited for it to start moving, this is a three foot drop off so I didn’t want it to fall so grabbed a few shots before prising it off and reuniting it with the field in front of us. A good meal for a Thrush no doubt. I must admit I do not think I have seen such a shiny shell as this one had, is that a sign that it was in good condition? Obviously edible size if you like that sort of thing, not for me.
This time of the year our garden and every roadside verge, hedgerow and fields are full of Foxgloves. We try very hard to cultivate any white ones that we have by spreading the seed around as I and the wife really like them. But typical one hundred yards from the house in a nearby field hedgerow is this magnificent specimen just doing it’s own thing and it is far superior to anything we have growing in our garden. We shall have to wait until it has seed heads and grab a few before the birds get them and see if we can improve our stock.
We are inundated with baby birds at the moment and I have added two today’s post. This first one is a Great Tit, not looking that much different to the parents except baby Tits always look as though they have been washed and cleaned by their parents before being allowed out in public, shiny and pristine.
This of course is a Blue Tit also like Mum & Dad but a bit more yellow than them but still very neat and tidy.
Though I have shown you Nuthatches before this one just kept me entertained while waiting for other birds. This of course is an adult, but seemed to be much keener to find grubs in the tree bark upside down than the right way up. In between getting the occasional grub out from under the bark it did spend a fair time on the peanut feeder. These are normally very flighty birds, but with it staying around I guess it was gathering food for young somewhere.
Not many of you will have this herb in your gardens and I am beginning to understand why, it is very hard to get rid of once it is established because of it’s large root system. Again not many will even hazard a guess to what it actually is that is why I am only showing you the seed head at the moment. It is a very versatile herb, an acquired taste and the young leaves can be tossed in a salad , or put inside a chicken or turkey before roasting, mainly used in soups and stews though you can add it to mash, put the seeds in bread or biscuits. Makes you want it doesn’t it? I quiet like the taste though my wife doesn’t as I said it is a required taste. It is in fact Lovage, who got that one, love to know. Just found out you can braise the roots , so might at last eradicate it from the garden if I like the taste.
Spoilt you rotten today with 4 shots of a daily village event, the arrival of the Tesco train. Rather than clutter the main trunk road to Inverness (the A9) Tesco have decided on sending all their goods going to Inverness and the surrounding shops up there by containers loaded on a train. today was 17 containers, so 17 less lorries on the road.
The line from Perth to Inverness is mainly a single track, so what happens at Blair Atholl is that with two tracks the engines can pass one another. Normally Tesco is in first and it sits in the station to await the North bound passenger train. Today the passenger train got in first so the Tesco train did not have to stop, which is a shame as I was going to dash down the platform and get some more shots, but above was todays sequence of events.
Though this is a wild plant we always had some in our gardens when living down South as it attracts the bees and is common in England. So of course we came up with some and it has become established in various areas of our garden. It is called Purple Toadflax and grows some 2 to 3 feet high and is a sturdy plant. Maybe it is new to Scottish bees as at present it is one of the few plants that we do not have many bees on, I am sure they will soon find it to their liking, just as we do.
One of my favourite plants in the garden this time of the year is this luscious blue Delphinium . Most years the blooms are much longer going a lot further down the stem than the flowers this year do, not sure what has made them so short, but it could be a combination of the dry spell we had late May or the hard winter affecting the roots. Either way it is still a terrific colour and a great plant, on researching it one fact I was not aware of is that it is a member of the Buttercup family, always learning that’s me.
Looking through the library of shots I have put on here I can see that I have not shown you what is most probably one of the most colourful birds we have on our shores, the Goldfinch. Once again I bring you two for the price of one, such bargains on this blog . Maybe I should have said one and a half as one of them has their body well and truly into my feeding trough. You have to agree though with that bright red head and that yellow wing stripe, contrasting against the black and white, they are more tropical than British.
It is pouring with rain today, so surely you wouldn’t want me to go outside and get myself and my camera gear wet, would you? so sat in doors watching all the new birds feasting away on the various feeders, this one (next to our living room window) is a young Blue Tit in it’s pristine coat of soft downy feathers, so much duller colours than their parents but still very beautiful. I would say we have one family of four youngsters who seem to get on with each other and two others that as soon as they come on the feeder squabbles begin, that is why I do not think they are from the same family. Add to this a group of Great Tit babes and the Siskin youngsters it is then that not much food gets eaten as they are all to busy seeing who is top dog, normally the Great Tits win.
We have a fair few Dunnocks in the garden they always remind me of a mouse with wings as they scurry about darting from one hedge to another, not really staying still for a moment. Maybe for that reason I do not recall seeing many babes, so was pleasantly surprised when wandering around the garden this one just sat on a fence post at the right time. It is often said that a good photograph is part skill, part luck of being in the right place at the right time and actually having the camera with you.
P.S. I have started a discussion on a forum I am on as some are saying this is a baby Robin not a Dunnock, others are agreeing with me so either way I haven’t put either up so it does not affect my challenge.
They do say a weed is just a flower in the wrong place, here is a prime example, this is a Hawkweed and not that common inn Scotland but maybe we came up with it from down south but it flourishes in our garden and we have two out of the three species that grow in G.B. I have shown it how it grows and also the beauty of it when you see it up close, hope you like it, we do.
Really hot here today and a walk by the River Tilt, in the shade was what was in order, unfortunately this was just a grabbed shot down by the river waiting for my beloved wife before heading off to Dunkeld and a walk by the River Tay instead.
Why is it, no matter what season we are in, when I am about to mow my lawns I spot a delicate little mushroom that just seems to beautiful to mow? I have trolled my mushroom books to see what this is but still not to sure of it’s name, so I wont attempt to get it right, needless to say I found it unusual to have those grooves on the top as well as in the gills. I think I will name it the inside out mushroom.
I know I have just put a Dunnock up this month that is why I have added it as a bonus to todays photo ( the mushroom), but I thought how clever was this bird. At present we are (for once) in a hot spell and the colder nights give the grass a fair bit of dew, so this bird decided that the cool and wetness of the grass was a good place to start the day, cooling itself down . It really snugged it’s way down to the soil hence not seeing a great deal of the body in this shot, so clever.