Toad and Friends: This Week in Our Wild Garden

 

We looked out the window yesterday morning at about 10.30 ... and were greeted with the sight of this rather magnificent toad. This is the second time we have seen the toad on our patio this summer. 

 

I have decided to post the extremely poor record shot above as much as a note to myself as anything. 

The point is that I saw the Migrant hawker in the lower half of this image, and took a quick photo, little realising that there was actually a second dragonfly above (see black arrow). Result: the top dragonfly has been cut in two unnecessarily. It was only a record shot (a quick first image in case the creature flew away), and as such the quality doesn't worry me too much; but what concerns me is the fact that even after this photograph had been taken, I still failed to notice the second insect. I have been thinking about William Blake and his famous, albeit metaphorical, line about seeing a universe in a sand particle; well, it seems I need to sharpen up my powers of observation and concentration considerably.

Below: this is a better image of the top dragon (which in mind at the time was the lower and only one, so presumably by this time the lower one had flown), showing off the distinctive yellow golf-tee marking on S2, just below the wings:

 

 

The photo below shows one of our two Wasp spiders. You can see a white food parcel near the top and what will become a second once the spider has completed her task. I'm wondering if she has wrapped up a small bee.

And finally for now, my first garden sighting of a tiny 22-spot ladybird. The sun was in completely the wrong place and the insect was only about 3mm in length, but at least I was able to identify it from the poor-quality photo. 

There have not been many butterflies about this week in the garden; perhaps it has been too windy. Even so, we have logged Peacock, Red Admiral, Large and Small White, Gatekeeper, Meadow Brown, Comma and Holly Blue. I wonder what the weekend will bring. I am still hoping to see my first Painted Lady of the season.

 

Day 15 #30DaysWild, 15 June: My Wildlife Photos

Swallowtail larva, Norfolk

Today is #NaturePhotographyDay so I thought I would post a few fairly random photographs from my collection, some with a caption but largely without explanation, for #30DaysWild. I hope you like them. Due to issues with my hands I cannot use a digital SLR, so these were taken on Lumix cameras. 

Loch Carron, Scotland

Frog, Peloponnese

'Mabel', the well-loved Tawny Owl

Taken with camera zoom extended on an official boat trip from Skye

Photo Collages - your thoughts?

Lizard Mosaic

I know there are very few lizards about in the UK at present (though I did read of some on Facebook some days ago), but I thought I would have a play around with my photo programmes, following advice from a Mac forum, to see what I could learn to do.

I don't think I have found the right solution yet, so would be interested to know what mosaic or collage programmes you favour. Options based around Picasa seem popular.

Five of the creatures in my collage are Common Lizards, photographed in the UK with a zoom lens. The remaining three, including the one at the bottom on the right, were seen in the Peloponnese five years ago, and I have not identified them. They may be Peloponnese wall lizards.

Lizards are a protected species here in Britain, along with other reptiles. They are included in the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981.

Blossoms of Hope Collaboration

And now for something a little different and rather special. My kind and creative friend and poetic collaborator, Kay Weeks (in the USA), has done a wonderful and spirited watercolour inspired by my one of my photographs of Loch Scavaig on the Isle of Skye. Kay's painting is the blue and indigo one in the centre of the invitation card above.

Travellers love to cross the unpredictable waters of the sea loch to reach the magical Loch Coruisk, painted so vividly by Turner and described by Sir Walter Scott as 'that dread lake'.

Loch Coruisk ...

... with its guardians

I am touched and humbled that Kay has chosen to put her painting of my photo forward as part of the Portraits and Profiles: Inspirations in my Life project to raise the profile of Blossoms of Hope, an organisation that supports the Claudia Mayer/Tina Broccolino Cancer Resource Center of Howard County General Hospital. 

Thank you, Kay! 

Rendez-vous in Philadelphia: me (left), Kay (centre), David Gill (left)

Nature Reserves: Minsmere (& Birdwatching Survey)

These are a few photos from a very chilly winter's day at Minsmere. The bird above is a Fieldfare, and I believe I have only seen this member of the Thrush family once before. I gather these birds eat worms and insects in addition to the Hawthorn berries that the one in the photo was enjoying. 

There was one small solitary Muntjac deer grazing among the pigeons.

The bird below (and again the twilight interfered with my photography!) is a Redwing. Like the Fieldfare above, Redwings are also members of the Thrush family. You can make out the distinctive cream stripe above the eye and its Robin-coloured flank. 

And finally ...

in my last post I posed the question, 'why do we watch birds?'
These were our answers ...

[a] professionally
[b] to tick off the species as you see them
[c] casually and for enjoyment
[d] to record trends in the avian population (which you submit to relevant bodies)
[e] because you enjoy photographing them
[f] because bird watching encourages exercise
[g] other

[a] - 1 reader
[b] - 3 readers
[c] - 4 readers
[d] - 1 reader
[e] - 4 of us (with one qualification!)
[f] - 1 reader (me!) included exercise

Kay added 'My watching birds really isn't on the list...they are fascinating, uplifting, always beautiful... ' I'm inclined to think this may constitute a [g] for this purpose! 

So thank you to all who responded!

Seasonal Splash: Snow Photo on Golau Cancer Centre Website

Sunlight, Swansea Marina

 I am delighted to have a 'chilly' winter photo of Mumbles on the home page of the Golau Cancer Foundation in Wales.

The photograph, which you will see if you click here, was taken two winters ago from my upstairs study in our Swansea home. We looked out over the tower of Singleton Hospital and on to the Mumbles (featured in the photo) and then out across the Severn Estuary to Exmoor.

So what is the The Golau Cancer Foundation? What does it do?

It is the new name for fundraising for the South West Wales Cancer Centre, which is a part of the South Wales Cancer Network and is the second largest non-surgical Cancer Centre in the country. It cares for people living in Bridgend up to Aberystwyth, and across all of West Wales, supporting a population of more than 800,000 people.

The Golau Cancer Foundation gives over 45,000 treatments to people every year, helping tens of thousands of people and their families through the fight against Cancer.

The Cancer Centre, based at Singleton Hospital in Swansea, has patients referred for treatment from across the network: Neath Port Talbot, Morriston, Prince Phillip, West Wales General, Withybush and Bronglas.  The work of the Centre includes:

• Local chemotherapy units
• Chemotherapy Day Unit (based at Singleton)
• Radiotherapy
• In patient treatments and specialised cancer care wards

 And incidentally, the Golau Christmas card range can be found here. I particularly like the 'Robin Red Breast' card!

Lepidoptera: Butterfly Conservation and Hedgerow Photo Competition

The Comma, a butterfly that hibernates rather than migrates.

If you enjoy taking photographs of the wildlife that inhabits our hedgerows, you might like to enter the Belvoir Fruit Farm Hedgerow Photography Competition. The farm will donate £1 to Butterfly Conservation for every photograph entered. Be sure to read the rules before you upload, as images cannot be entered if they have appeared in public before. Your entry will earn you free membership of Butterfly Conservation.

• Wet summer affects butterfly numbers

Beautiful Birds (41): Plus a Hoverfly ... Calendar Photos

I was delighted to receive two contributor copies of the Swansea Vale Resource Centre calendar today. My wildlife photographs represent ...

• April - Puffins and a Gannet
• May - Mumbles Pier, with its Kittiwakes
• July - the Hoverfly you see above

The calendar was part of the COASTAL Project, 'Life through a Lens'.

Butterflies and Moths (8): Painted Ladies

I thought back to last summer and the invasion of Painted Ladies. I have hardly seen any this year, but you can read about their mass migration antics here. If you have seen Painted Ladies in 2010, you might care to log them here.

I thought this butterfly would be a good subject for my experiment at enlarging the size of my photos on Blogger, thanks to a little help from Madsen Madness. Feel free to let me know how these look for size on your screen.