Wildflower Project 8

Second post of July's flowers - Long-headed Poppy, Purple Loosestrife, Common Knapweed, Yellow Bedstraw, Feverfew, Wall Bedstraw, Hawkbit, Ragwort, Bristly Oxtongue, Teasel, Carrot, Yellow Loosestrife, Geum, Procumbent Yellow Sorrel

 

Wildflower Project 7

Continuing my aim to record all the wildflowers in the garden and surrounding countryside, here is another batch showing Perforated St.Johns Wort, Yellow Corydalis, Type of Medick?, Wild Parsnio, Ground Elder, Fennel, Marjoram, Self-heal, Fumaria vaillantii, Lesser Willowherb, Small Scavious, Greater Willowherb, Sun Spurge, Meadowsweet

Unexpected Silver-Washed Fritillary on our Buddleia

As far as we know our nearest Silver Washed Fritillary colony is around 9 miles from our house so we were very surprised to see one on our Buddleia bush on Monday along with lots of Peacocks, Red Admirals and Tortoiseshells. Other garden inhabitants shown include first instar Green Shieldbugs (yes they are red!), mating Soldier Beetles, Adelphocoris leaf bug, Grasshopper, Firebug, Pied Hoverfly, Anthomyia Fly and German Wasps on our plums.

Multiexposure Blends

To help previsualize the effect of the different blending modes on my compact camera, I did two series of images in the order  Dark, Bright, Average and Additive. Hopefully this will assist when 'out in the field' to work out which mode might give the image that  I have in mind. One of the good features of the camera is it stores all the component images as RAWs.

Weird and Wonderful Insect Portraits

I spent a day at Paxton Pits with my head in the meadows and hedgerows and came away with quite a collection of portraits of the colourful, beautiful and not so beautiful inhabitants. The first fly (Phasia hemiptera) was so striking in its colours it caught my eye from a distance so quite an enlargement for this one. The last two flies are both Snail killing flies that lay their eggs on snails (the larvae consume the snails from the inside. The paired flies above these are Sicus ferrugenous and this species waits on flowerheads for a passing Bumblebee, launches itself upward, hitching a lift with the bee and at the same time laying its eggs on the bee. Two extremes of size for the spiders - the first one a Furrow orb spider had its web in the coiled top of a grass while the funnel spider is quite an impressive size for a British arachnid.