Ity has been sixteen long days without a P.C. ( mainly thanks to Royal Mail delayed delivery) but I am back up and working. As I have said in the past I like to take the photo of the day and put it straight onto the draft for the half month, that keeps it fresh in this empty brain of mine and is so much easier than writing it up all at once. So I had to remember to take a photograph daily, keep them in camera ( along with all other shots I have taken ) until I could transfer them onto the repaired computer (repaired by me by the way, a computer geek at last), had a wee panic when I was short of one shot for the 8th of this month, but found it in the wrong folder eventually. So here I go putting words to photos for the last day of last month and up until today the 15th.
Two for the price of one on the last day of May. The first shot is from my moth trap, the first real warm night since I got it for my birthday and I had loads to identify. This particularly large specimen is a Poplar Hawk moth, a stunning beast that I had never seen before.
The second shot is taken not on my main camera but on my trail camera, set up because my son had seen this Wildcat in the garden late one night. Oxford University are doing a study of them and I sent this and a few more shots off to them to get they’re opinion of it, they seem to think it is a hybrid that has bred with a domestic cat, but were interested in it. In fact a member of staff last week came with some catmint type plant that they love in a hessian piece of sacking that I have put out on string with the hope that the cat will bite into it and a DNA can be extracted from it. As of last night I have captured pictures of the cat sniffing it but not biting it. Exciting times though and thrilled that such a beast actually comes in the garden.
Our garden this time of the year is full of these Icelandic Poppies, all yellow and they only last a day but a great little plant to have in the garden, all we do is allow it to go to seed and let it sprinkle itself around the garden.
Not a great lover of rhodendrum but amongst the Azaleas this one is a stunning colour, so it can stay.
Springwatch was saying that there is a shortage of Blue Tits nesting in boxes this year or that those that have had failed because of the cold start and lateness of food for the babes. I agree this is the only box that is occupied and is (so far) successfully raising young. We did have a fright last week when the near gale force winds blew the lid off and left 3 very young featherless babes very venerable, but I managed to go out about 8 at night when I spotted it and re-attach it. Still both parents are busy feeding so hopefully I will show you some fledged Blue Tits later on.
A couple of male Mallards complete with reflection a good sunny day for once, on a local pond not my garden one.
First of the fledglings in the garden one of the, maybe, three babes from the House Sparrows nest above my bedroom window, being well fed (courtesy of me of course) and looked after by the parents. It still has that whiteness around the beak making it look larger when opened up for feeding.
Okay normally this is a common bird for most of you, for us it is a bird we have seen mainly during the breeding season and I have shown you already that it had built two nests within the garden, but abandoned both. Well at least it is still around and on a dark miserable day it was great to see this lovely Thrush coming in for a feed, we call these elegant little birds, to me almost royal in appearance.
Again I am so generous to you all, two photos for today as I could not choose which one I preferred. The top one is a field that we see on our walks up the glen. I just loved the way the farmer had mown this grass and how it showed all the different levels within that field.
The second I am informed by by one of my sons is a Four Dotted Chaser, okay there are four dots on each wing, but with two wings shouldn’t it be called an eight dot? Anyway it is the first dragon fly we have seen this “summer?” and I was fortunate enough to have the right lens on at the right spot as it settled down.
I just loved getting this shot, it was taken in the heart of the village by the information centre, with people walking the area all day long and the rabbits just dart into the undergrowth when you walk past. This youngster just popped his head up out of the long grass and I knew where he had gone and was ready for it to appear. Glad to say our population around the house have been eradicated by a young lad with a ferret, so the garden is rabbit free.
Okay I have shown you my mealworms but I thought I would show you the complete life cycle, which by the end of the year I hope to be self sufficient in this much appreciated bird food. At present I buy the mealworms in they then turn into the armour plated looking laves that are white, before becoming beetles that then breed, lay eggs and turn into mealworms.
I am really giving you value for money this month, three different stages above of the eclipse we had. Started about ten in the morning in the first shot, progressed to it’s peak about eleven twenty, before finishing in the last shot about ten past twelve. So glad that we had some cloud to dim it down as when it was in clear sky it was to powerful for the filters I had on the camera. But pleased I managed to get these shots (plus a few more I have not put up) .
This is the River Tilt from the road bridge, as you can see the river levels are very low, mainly due to the fact we have not had much rain and being a spate river it is only really any height when there has been rain. Middle left you can see a small pool just off the main river, this is the diversion into the lade that feeds the mill and due to the low levels the lade is completely dry, so no flour being milled. Normally when this low the spit in between the river and the lade can normally be piled up to give the majority to the mill. But as the salmon are coming up the river to spawn, the Environmental Agency will not allow any alterations to the water course.
This is a standard Primula that we had to have in the garden because of it’s name a “Dusty Miller” the nickname of all Millers, well except mine which is “Daisy”, don’t ask.
On one of our daily walks I saw this and loved it, I love the way nature just takes up any opportunity it can to grow where ever possible.
This Potentilla took a real beating in the extra long cold Winter we have just had and we really thought we would need to replace it as a hedgerow, but the plants that have matured up here seem to be a hardy bunch and these have bloomed their socks off and as an added bonus the Bees love it.
So pleased for my last shot I can show you this beauty a Rainbow Trout weighing in at exactly 3 lb a personal best for me from our local water at Blair Walker the water I showed you in another blog. Will be smashing to eat when I cold smoke it later on in the year, don’t worry it is in the freezer until that day.
That is me caught up from the computer shortage, my two fingers are burning from typing, but I made it.