Stowe Landscape Gardens

I visited Stowe Landscape Gardens today on my way to lecture in Oxford. Temperature hit 25 degrees and clear blue skies - such a contrast to the last week of cold cloudy days. Good weather for the infrared though the foliage is so fresh and active that there is too much light and contrast around 

Wicken Fen on a Dismal Day

Today was cold and grey - more like February than mid May. We went to Wicken looking to photograph Hobbies catching mayflies - the mayflies were all immobile in the reeds and I only saw one distant Hobby . There were several Cuckoos; the lady above nearly trod on this one before it broke cover. Also caught in flight Marsh Harrier, Black-headed Gull (picking mayflies out of the reeds), Swift and Kestrel

Simple Pleasures of Life

Sadie enjoying our Clematis montana, which is especially full of flowers this year, and helping to feed and supervise Millie and Ruby's breakfast.

Rape and Wheat Fields

 The rape fields in Cambridgeshire are in full bloom at the moment. Each year I try different compositions of the fields around Toft with focus points in different places.

Ruby, now over 11years old, decided to have a run along the tractor tracks in the wheat fields and then got very worried that she couldn't get back to us. She managed it in the end.

Sadie and Meredith

I haven't done as much photography as usual at this time of year, partly because of the cold wet weather but also because of my two granddaughters - Sadie looking angelic as always and Meredith unusually quietly asleep. They keep me pretty well entertained for much of the day (with occasional spells on night calming duties)

Lapwing Monocular Vision

I took a trip to Fen Drayton pits yesterday to see what was about - not much! I did spend a bit of time photographing a pair of Lapwings and got intrigued by the placement of the eyes - they can obviously see directly behind as well as in front. I then wondered what the world looks like to them and looked up on the web.

 Certain birds including snipe and some other waders have 360 degree horizontal vision and 180 degree verticelly so can detect a potential danger immediately. Their vision is monocular and so they have a harder time judging distances. Birds like raptors have their eyes placed far to the front giving them binocular vision as ours. These birds may have a 180 degree field of overall vision with much of that binocular. They have much sharper vision to the front than their monocular cousins.

The structure of a bird's eye is similar to humans but most birds' eyes are flatter than human eyes. This flatness allows birds to have a larger area in focus at one time while we focus one smaller area at a time. Cones allow the brain to perceive colours. A human may have 10,000 cones per square millimeter while some birds may have up to 120,000 per square millimeter! Birds who forage and feed in the daylight see colours very clearly from far off. In particular, they can distinguish greenish colours much better than we can. In addition, most birds have a UV sensivity with a maximum around 370 nm. This ability allows them for example a better detection of fruits or rodents (scent marks) and a better differentiation of plumage patterns.

St Petersburg Web Gallery

 At last I have managed to at least get one Gallery up for the New Year Russian trip. More to follow as I also put a book together of the images. Web link for Gallery

Lakenheath on a Cold Damp Morning

Only a couple of Hobbies seen but made up for by a flight of three Bitterns. Light not very good and distant subjects.

Bikes and Scooters at Santapod

XFest at Santapod today was an extravaganza of wheeled stunts from the microscooters through BMX bikes, motorbikes to jet powered racers. As I was collecting Phil on my way back from Birmingham, I only had my G12 compact - not the ideal camera for the task but eventually got the hang of predicting where the bike etc would be after the shutter lag.

Harlequin Centre Watford

A quick visit to the Harlequin Shopping centre in Watford on my way to lecture at Croxley Green Camera Club and a chance to test the camera in my mobile phone. For a small camera it does a pretty good job.

Large Red Damselfly

 A couple of Large Red Damselflies hatched from nymphs during yesterday afternoon. The one above emerged successfully but the one below failed to extract the wings completely. With today's cold wet weather, I doubt either will be successful in surviving to mate.

Hanningfield Reservoir

The rain stopped yesterday morning and so I visited Hanningfield Reservoir Nature Reservoir. The Nature Reserve is an ancient woodland with Hornbeams, Beech, Oak and Ferns. Around the centre are Horse chestnut and Sycamores,  all in fresh green leaf. One area is carpeted in Buebells