Another orchid species for you

Last year, I bought you this blog , sharing an image of a rather poor little specimen of what I incorrectly identified at the time as a Common Spotted Orchid, Dactylorhiza fuchsii.

Well I had a closer look at it this year, and can confirm that is indeed a Heath Spotted Orchid, Dactylorhiza maculata  as can be identified by the pattern on the petals, and also on the label when I bought it now I have found it again.

To be fair, it was so scruffy last year, that I will forgive myself the poor i/d. And I can console myself that none of our readers told me I had got it wrong :-)


So here it is this year hiding down in among the rest of the wildflowers in the garden.  Just a mere ten steps from my kitchen door.  Like many orchids this year that have suffered with extreme dry conditions the bloom could be bigger, but I am pleased that it has come back again, as I have a bit of soft spot for our native orchids.

Martin

Three Orchid Night

Yesterday was a very hot hot day, or at least by recent standards.  So with that in mind, I expected it to bring forth new species and we took a little wander round one of our local patch sites last night after supper to see what was emerging. 

Well the most numerous species were the newly emerged Five Spot Burnet moths.  I will bring you some of these in the next blog but suffice to say, we gave up mentally counting once we got to fifty.

As well as new sightings of Meadow Brown, Ringlet and Marbled White butterflies in this location, I was pleased to see all three orchids species at this location in bloom.

 Common Spotted

 Bee

Pyramid

Well it has been a good year for numbers of orchids locally but the specimens themselves have been quite poor.

There is a view that the incredibly dry spring, in particular during May, which has resulted in small and stunted blooms.

Oh well - till next year then

Martin

Garden Update - A quickie

Last month, Jac and I spent a fairly pleasant day at Gardeners World Show at the NEC  in Birmingham, looking at various garden stuff and plants.  A couple of the plant stands were selling seed grown native British orchids. Well regular readers will know that I enjoy photographing orchids so it didn't take too much temptation to get a delightful little Dactylorhiza species to bring home and plant.  It was sold to me as a Southern Marsh orchid, but I had my suspicions.

Well anyway after a few weeks we had this beautiful little Common Spotted Orchid Dactylorhiza fuchsii come into bloom in amongst the long grasses.  It is just starting to go over in this picture but this is a big as it got, so no quite up to some of the wild species we have that grow locally, but just a few steps from my back door so that is OK by me.

Martin

Local Patch - Orchid Progress

As promised a couple of days back, I said I would bring you some orchid images.  At my local patch where I reported that the Bee Orchids got decimated last year, it is great to see that the mowers have stayed away.  The only difficulty that brings is with all the long grass it can be difficult to get clean shots.

The first of the Common Spotted started to appear with stems at the end of May.  This first image below was taken on June 2nd

Many have been in the open, but a few hide quite nicely in the deeper growth of wild flowers.

It is still early days for many of them as you can see here.  So I reckon they will be at their best this weekend and next week for the Spotteds (The 2nd, 3rd and 4th images were all taken this past weekend)

The Spotted, i.e the Dactylorhiza forms do a lot of cross breeding and hybridisation, and so you see many forms and colour variations.  As you can see from this previous image, it is quite different from the one before it.

It has been great to see many of the Bee Orchids  Ophrys apifera coming up.  Last year there were also some bi colour forms present but there are currently none in that area, but I will check again soon.

This stem is probably the most advanced at the site, with plenty of others just coming up such as this next one.

I also checked out the Pyramidals too, Anacamptis pyramidalis.   There are quite a few coming up in their very early stages.

This is probably the most advanced stem I found.  So again I will be following their progress and getting a further set of images.

I did check out another location where Wasp Orchids are also recorded each year but there was no sign at all.  So I will keep my fingers crossed and take another look at the weekend.

All images were taken with the new 'old' 5D and the Canon 180 macro lens.  I really do love that macro lens, and I also love working with the 5D again.  Full frame is very nice, and as Dave mentioned recently, the DOF effects are really quite excellent without a crop sensor.  I think a 5Dmk2 beckons.

As I type this blogpost on Tuesday evening for posting tomorrow, I have just switched on my moth trap.  I mentioned back here that this was a forthcoming project,  Well I got the electronics last week, built it over the weekend and finished it off tonight.  It seems like a good evening weather wise for it, so I will see what we can bring in.  I will do a more detailed blog with construction pictures, and share some of the pitfalls and share a few tips if you want to have a go at this yourselves.

Finally, check back in later this evening as I will update this with some Southern Marsh Orchid images that have come out at work, so I will get some images at lunchtime, and upload them for you to see.

Update:  As promised a couple more images for you, fresh out the camera from this lunchtime.

One of 92 stems I found of Southern Marsh Orchid at my work site.  I am sure I missed a few others as well.

One in 100.

Ok I know it is "another" Common Spotted, but this single stem was growing on its own as a species with the hundred Southern Marsh orchids I saw today, so I thought it right to include it.  Tricky bright harsh midday sun but an A4 pad used as a reflector helped balance out the exposure a little.

Martin.

Great News - The power of the blog

Long term readers of the blog may remember that last year I did a few posts with some images of various orchids species, many of them taken close to where I live.  Sadly, many fine Bee Orchids were chopped down by council employed grass verge cutting contractors.  Now clearly this was an unfortunate accident, but made doubly heart breaking as it had happended twelve months previously.  Now I ran the story here on the blog which was also picked up by The Stratford Herald, our local newspaper.

I also contacted the Warwickshire Principal Wildlife Officer to bring this to the notice of the County authorities.

Well the great news is that I was asked to go to a  recent meeting of a number of interested parties to discuss the care of these wonderful wild flowers.  Sadly, I was unable to attend as I was poorly, but I have now received a marked up map with all the locations that are going to be protected.  Some bits are missing, so I will add these and return them.

So it will be with hopefully much better coordination and planning, we will keep them throughout their full period of bloom this year.  I will keep the blog informed.

Martin

Council Vandalism - Warwickshire

As promised on my Saturday post.

I went to my local site that has a good display of Common Spotted, Pyramid and Bee Orchids, a number of which I have already posted on previous blogposts.

I was there last Sunday evening and took the first two images of a group growing in a traffic island on the approach to a roundabout, so have set the image in the environment context.

Note the length of the grass - hardly needs cutting does it - not even for Health & Safety!!!!

I went back just two days later with a few other photographers from Stratford Photo Group to find what you see in the third image.

This was just plain vandalism on an official scale!!.

Now if this had been the first time, you could perhaps put it down to just plain incompetence. The sad thing is that this happened last year.

On a good note, one of the locals went out a put up a quick sign on one of the one of the other islands to prevent any more from this fate, and I am pleased to see they were doing well when I went there yesterday.

The final image again shows a single stem in the road context, and before it was turned to grass cuttings

All taken with the Canon 24-70 f2.8L lens and the 1Dmk111.





Martin

Tips & Techniques - Lighting Control

A couple of nights ago I went to the Orchid site to get some more images. One of the things I wanted to do was to share the results of using full sunlight, with and without fill flash and diffused light, with and without flash.

For consistency I set the camera up on a tripod, with the 1Dmk111, used the Canon 100f2.8 macro in Av mode at f9.0, and the metering set in Evaluative mode. All images were set to -1/3 EV comp and the subject distance was 0.69m.

I have just straight processed the RAW file - no tweaks, and just resized to 600pixels, and one light stage of sharpening just for the web and the colour space converted to srgb. Camera was set to AWB and unchanged in the RAW conversion.

For the flash shots, I used the Canon MR14 ring flash, set to ETTL mode. For the diffuser I used a large circular Lastolite diffuser that was hand held over the subject.

Click on the image to enlarge to see in better detail, and then hit the back button to get back as the images don't open in a separate window unfortunately

Full sunlight - no flash

Full sunlight with fill flash set to minus 1 EV

Hand held Diffuser - no flash

Hand held Diffuser - fill flash set to zero EV compensation

Hand held Diffuser - fill flash set to minus 1 EV

It would be good to get your feedback and comments as to what you think provides the most pleasing and natural image, and why you think that.

So over to you.

Martin

Local Patch - Warwickshire & Worcestershire

As I mentioned here I have been following the progress of some of the orchids on my local patch.

The stems that I saw just emerging in the previous report were in fact Pyramidal Orchids. which are progressing well and about a week away from being in prime photographic condition. I had been hoping that they were something else so was disappointed when I checked them out last week.

But going back last night, I found what I have been hoping to see for quite a while - Bee Orchids. I very nearly didn't bother to take the camera, but decided to on the off chance and glad I did.

The breeze was a bit of a problem, and they are not quite there so I will be going back a few times yet to get better images as they progress.

The Common Spotteds are now in great condition to photograph, but were suffering in the wind so I didn't bother with those at that site, but I jumped in the car and went to another site not too far away on the borders of Worcestershire, and found more Pyramidal, and a few Common Spotted that were easier for photography as the wind had eased a little. The sun was setting so the colour temperature was exceptionally warm so I slid it back just a fraction in the RAW processing to neutralise it a little.

Bee Orchid

Bee Orchid

Common Spotted Orchid

Common Spotted Orchid

Martin

News - Common Spotted Orchids

Now is the time to photograph these in England if you have any near you.

I have seen any number of these at three different locations on Thursday evening in Warwickshire and at another location on Friday and also in Dorset. They do not have a very long life span when all the flowers are in good condition, so if you want to get some images then you will need to get out there soon.

Some details on the species can be found here.

Martin

Local patch - Stratford upon Avon

One of the great finds I made this year is a little wildlife reserve within walking distance of where I live. It was a beautiful evening last night with strong late sun, so with the breeze easing I took a short walk. I took the 1D111 and 180 macro on the off chance, as you do. Well I was pleased to see eight Painted Lady butterflies. There is a veritable flood of these migrants into the UK this year, and I have seen quite a number passing through the garden as well.

Additionally, there were two male Orange tips, five Speckled Woods, three large Whites, two Small Whites, a Small Heath and finally this beautiful Large Skipper on the second image.

Painted Lady

Large Skipper

After I had completed this little walk, I took a drive to a location where there are many Common Spotted Orchids. It is still too early for them yet, but they are not far off now. I also found over a dozen of another species of Orchid, which are just coming up too. I am pretty sure I know what they are, and am hoping that I will be right. I will let you know if I was right when I photograph them.

Martin

Trip Report - Thrislington NNR

As I mentioned here last weekend, I went to an interesting place with many Early Purple Orchids on the run back from Scotland.

The site is the Thrislington NNR in County Durham, a site rich in magnesium limestone so good for wildflowers.

Just across the road from the site is a Lafarge quarrying site, which can be seen in the background of the first image.

This image was taken with the Canon 24-70f2.8L lens to give an environmental shot of the subject and habitat.

This second image was taken using the Canon 180f3.5L macro lens, which really is a beautiful bit of kit which I am very thankful for the loan of at the moment. It has been seeing some good use and hope to get more fine images this summer.

Both were taken with the gear on a tripod set to low level, and manual focussed and exposed.

Martin

Reviews - Orchids Website

Now that orchids are starting to bloom, I had a pleasant walk this afternoon through a field with dozens of Early Purple Orchids (sadly too windy to photograph today) and was photographing White Helleborine on Mull yesterday, I thought I would flag up an interesting site that I have found. It is Britains Orchids Field Guide. There is lots of really useful information there with details of the UK species as well as their respective flowering periods.

I have a number of different types near my home in Warwickshire and so will look forward to getting some images as they bloom.

Martin