Weedon's World of Nature

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Red-back

Red-backed Shrike, Holme NWT, 26.8.07 (digiscope)

Friday, August 24, 2007

This Southern Hawker emerged from our pond yesterday. It still haddn't spread its wings yet and was just hanging resting on a Water Dock plant. Later I found the exuvia which had fallen into the water. I guess this came with the plants from from either Tom's or Kev's garden. Unfortunately I needed to use flash to photograph the insect (A640)

Thursday, August 23, 2007

Sound

I noticed it for the first time a few weeks ago. I was watching the gogglebox and there was strange high-pitched scraping, crackling sound coming from the top right corner of my hearing. It had been hot and I just assumed a bee or hoverfly was in the conservatory, banging its wings against the lightshade or the window. But it continued, so I went for an explore.

I searched all over the consrvatory, but there was no sign of the source of the crackle – but surely one of my pitcher plants, sundews or venus flytraps would get it, whatever it was...

But the crackling didn't stop, it was always there, like bristling electricity or a battery of fairies typing their memoirs. Crackle crackle, non-stop invisible crackle from somewhere near the glass roof of the conservatory.

Now I have found what the source of the sound is, I feel strangely at peace, though the crackling is a constant companion to any TV watching, only dying down in the dead of night.

Just beneath our bedroom window, and just above the conservatory, deep within the brickwork broods the bristling, bustling, thriving nest of a million wasps.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The power of digiscoping

I have cropped the head of the Cattle Egret featured below under the More from Mallorca... entry. If you click on the image you will see it at actual size. Not bad detail is it?
The image was (handheld) digiscoped with my new digiscoping camera of choice, the Canon PowerShot A640 through my Kowa 623 and 32x eyepiece. I reckon the 10Mpixels allow the preservation of loads of extra detail on cropped images, compared with the my previous favourite the 5Mpixel PowerShot A95.