Sunday 8 May 2011

Slowly does it.



A tiny but very pretty moth, a Small Yellow Underwing (a dark brown Moth with a bright yellow underwing, an appropriately named Moth!) flew onto one of our Lavender plants at 11.30am today, in the sunshine in the back garden, nipping in to get the camera, it was obviously camera shy as it flew immediately over to the Lavender bush in the middle of the garden and disappeared as the sun was masked by cloud. This Moth is a day flying moth and only seen flying in sunshine, unusual for a Moth.
Later on I photographed an obliging Drone Fly on the Lavender bush. This Fly has 2 distinctive chestnut coloured wedge shaped markings on its abdomen.
A very pleasant walk through a reasonably local Bluebell wood, parking first at the churchyard revealed a Chiff- Chaff singing in plain view from a dead tree and a concealed Willow Warbler singing nearby in the Churchyard.
As we were walking along the bordered path at the start of the wood, I noticed a curled brown strand on the path which looked vaguely familiar. Stooping down I was delighted to find it was an excellent Slowworm, it hadn't moved (Jenny was in front of me and she was concerned she had accidently stood on it, I'm sure she hadn't) and I was concerned as to its health as it hadn't moved for some time, until its head popped up and this excellent legless Lizard posed beautifully for the camera, easily my most obliging Slowworm to date!
Having performed a faultless photoshoot (I had my 150mm Macro lens with me), the light was reasonable and I could use F5.6 aperture on an ISO 400 speed, the Slowworm then slowly moved round and then headed back to the fence and moved swiftly off when Jenny tried to touch it (not a good idea as it might jettison its tail as a defence mechanism from predators, fortunately it didn't do this, somehow I think we'll have to have a talk about fieldcraft later!!)
Later on a male Orange Tip butterfly flew past us by the Bluebell wood, composed almost entirely of English Bluebells but I noticed a few of the more robust Spanish Bluebells as the edge of the path (2% of the Bluebells were Spanish).
Finally at 6pm I noticed a Drone Fly on the lounge window sill inside our house and I realised on a bush in the front garden.
At Burgh St Peter's centre we saw and heard 2 Sedge Warblers, an overflying Grey Heron, 2 Swallows over the fields and 3 Swift high up in the sky overhead, also a quartering female Marsh Harrier close to the road (but against the sun) as we drove down.

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