Foraging for Nectar

A couple of pictures from a walk round Wimpole walled garden today. The image of the bee covered in pollen is not very sharp - it was moving a bit quickly for my chosen shutterspeed but I wanted to share the image of the insect almost obliterated by pollen.

Paxton Pits Dragonflies

I wanted to get a good image of a flying Brown Hawker but failed dismally to get any in focus. I felt a bit of compensation with this image of a blue damselfly feeding off another insect - looks like a mayfly but not sure.
The trio of Blue Damselflies with their reflections also was surprisingly sharp.
Red Darters flying in tandem worked reasonably well but I prefer the pair in the tree with one coyly looking round a leaf.
Finally a Water Boatman - difficult to portray the fact that it is hanging on the underside of the water surface.

Bye Bye to the Swallows

Our garage is full of roosting swallows each evening at the moment (presumably young from the two broods that were raised in the garage this year). They are making an awful mess but it is a privilidge to be ab le to get so close to them. They will soon be off to Africa - not sure if the adults go first as with cuckoos or whether the families go together.

Three Cambridge Images

Exotic Visitors to the Garden

Phil found this caterpillar wandering across our patio. I thought Elephant Hawkmoth caterpillars were usually green but apparently the dark version is more common. They both have the characteristic large 'eyes' behind the true head. They feed on Willowherbs or Fuchsia. Our one does not appear full grown in size and started eating as soon as it was offered Lesser Willowherb leaves.
I put out the moth trap last night - there were not many moths in the morning but a very impressive Hornet had been attracted to the light. Here are a couple of shots as it warmed up the wings and then flew off.

Diverse Diptera

Five different species of flies that were feeding on the Solidago this afternoon. These were taken with the 100mm macro - it was quite windy so I needed to work at 800 ISO to get sufficient speed and aperture. I would like a little more depth of field so will try again on a calm day with a tripod (if any flies will stay still long enough!)

Last Two from Glasgow

I have been working on the Mackintosh pictures and have put up a Gallery of images on my website (Ann Miles Photography).
These two are from The Lighthouse a building Mackintosh helped design as an apprentice in 1895

More from the Pipe Festival

A couple more reflection photos from the marching band displays on Tuesday. The American Cadets from South Carolina had the shiniest bells. There were bands from around the globe including Swiss Highlanders and a Polish Band. Here are two of the best turned out bands - the massed pipes of Scottish regiments and the Jordanian Pipers.

Reflections of Glasgow

Today's theme was reflections, starting with the intriguing planet earth type images in the euphoniums (?euphonia) of the Guards band. More of these to follow.

The Beresford Cinema reflected in a car rear window gave another spot of red (to counteract the green of the previous posting).

We have spent quite a few hours in the back alley ways and today was even more interesting with reflections in puddles after heavy rain.

We decided to visit the east side of the city today and ended up at a friendly match between Celtic and Blackburn. It is a very impressive stadium seating 60,000 when full but it was less then half full for this preseason match. There were lots of cute kids - especially young girls - all dressed up in green and white. I felt quite nostalgic for my days as Cambridge United Photographer and actually the football wasn't much better.

Tale of Two Cities

We visited Perth in the morning on Saturday to meet friends for lunch.
There are quite a few of the original tenement houses there with the communal entrances and staircases. In the afternoon we went on to Edinburgh - a great contrast to quiet Perth as it is the start of the Festival so the city was all youth and noise though I did find one back alley way that I liked.

House for an Art Lover

The House for an Art Lover was constructed between 1989 and 1996 from a design of 1901 by Mackintosh for his wife Margaret MacDonald. We weren't able to visit the whole house as there was a wedding on later in the afternoon but they allowed us to view the main rooms.

Scotland Street School

Scotland Street School,which was designed by Charles Renee Mackintosh, was opened in 1906 and closed in 1979. A very light interior with lots of CRM features. I was rather dismayed at how many of the rooms reminded me of my primary school - the desks, ink wells, outside toilets, clockrooms. My London County Council School was much drearier however with brown and cream paint not the vibrant blues and greens. I didn't take a shift lens today as it was raining heavily but wished I had for the exterior shots.