Creative Cityscapes with Household Objects

Our Camera club project for this month is Creating landscapes etc using household objects. Here is the contents of our 'odds and ends' box (set up shown at end). These are unmanipulated images - the daytime ones use a printed cloud background.  The city is on a black tile on our black kitchen table which is covered by a thin film of cooking oil to give a wavy reflection.

Cormorants Nest building

The Cormorants are very busy building their nests at the moment and bring back all kinds of materials such as a feather in the first picture, twigs and even a whole reed. This proved to be quite a challenge getting it up to the nest high in the trees so after two failed circuits round the lake trying to gain enough altitude, it landed on the water to rest and then took off with the reed even heavier from the added water but successfully made it to the nest. Then time to fly off and take time to rest and dry off in the sun. I only saw one non-breeding bird (last image) - the rest were resplendent in their breeding plumage.

Great Crested Grebe Courtship Dance

Spring was definitely in the air this morning with the Grebes performing their courtship dance and starting a bit of nest construction. There was a lot of head turning and bobbing at all possible occasions.

Ely Cathedral Park

Images from a sunny walk in Ely Cathedral Park where I got intrigued by this old spreading London Plane tree. I couldn't find the origin and age of this tree though there is a Plane tree in the Palace garden that is said to be the oldest in England planted in 1630. 

Spring Flowers Closeup - Sexuality in the Primrose

All the years I have been photographing flowers, I was under the impression that Primroses were examples of  "unisexual" monoecious flowers where either the stamens or the carpels are missing in all the flowers in a clump.  Researching how the primrose ensures an even distribution of 'male' (pin-eyed plants) and 'female' (thrum-eyed plants), I discovered they are in fact bisexual but have different arrangements of the male and female parts - see diagram.

 Most of these are taken with a Fuji compact X100 V fitted with a X4 plus a X2.5 diopter close up lens in combination giving very close focus.  

Redpoll: New Species for Garden List

We were excited to see a pair of Redpolls in the garden yesterday. The male was looking resplendent with his red breast and cap. The female on the feeder shows how small they are compared with the Goldfinch. The male was ringed - presumably a British ring - anyone any  info on this?