Annual Visit to Sandy

We visited Sandy yesterday on a very hot day so the Beewolf Wasps were very active. I mainly shot video and you will be 'treated' to my compilation when complete but I also took some stills of the wasps with their prey, the male resting in the shade (very sensible), the Pantaloon Bees (good number of these this year). The Red-banded Sandwasp had caught a very large caterpillar and struggled to get it back to its burrow. We lost sight of it heading through the undergrowth.

I have just uploaded a page to my website of all the complex interactions that I have recorded on the heath - link here for some fascinating stories!

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.