Mounting Excitment

I have been tracking the new PC as it left California yesterday, It went from LA to Texas to Florida and then onto South Carolina and is now making its way North so its well travelled, I actually paid extra for packaging to make sure that it arrives in as good a condition as it left-Fingers crossed, We spend far too much time behind a computer screen so its worth the money to get a good one and one that you can grow with over the next few years, We are having the survey done on our house tomorrow and i have a few things to tide up so i am afraid its a quicky from me today

Dave

Strange Parallels - Nature and Machine

Sitting outside in my garden last week as dusk was falling, I was marvelling at the aerial ballet and dogfight-like flying of the Swifts overhead.  As I have said before on the blog, I love to watch these birds fly.

It took me back a few years, in fact all the way back to my early childhood and got me reminiscing about watching Spitfire and Mustangs at airshows and how they jinked and flew about to entertain us.  

I haven't been to a decent airshow for a few years now and haven't really missed it to be honest, particularly when you have your own daily airshow each day with the Swifts.

As recent as last night, with the young now fledged, we have had over a hundred flying a few hundred feet up overhead as they flock for the night.

In taking me back to my previous enjoyment of airshows , I was saddened to hear this weekend of the death of one particular beautiful bird, the P51D mustang - 'Big Beautiful Doll'.  She was my favourite, beautiful restored and cared few, superbly flown and always a pleasure to see.

Sadly, she collided with anther aircraft and was destroyed in the resulting crash.  The good news was that Rob Davies the pilot/owner managed to parachute clear.

Here she is in better times from a few years ago.

Martin

Pond Life

Just after i finished scribbling the blog i popped into my garden to check the bird feeders which are next to the pond, I noticed something on the rock in the pond and on closer inspection its a minute froglet complete with tail, About 1/2''-3/4'', So i grabbed the Nikon D7000 and the ultra sharp Sigma 150mm Macro along with a 32mm extension tube and grabbed a few shots from the front and side-smallest frog i have ever seen, The light was low as was the shutter speeds so i am lucky to get some sharp images, I can see why Sigma have just added OS (Optical stabiliser) to this lens

Dave

Stressful times

I am not sure why but everything seems to come at once, Our house is sold and we will be moving into a rental for 5-6 months whilst our new home is being built, It will be on 2.5 acres of woodland which has big gardens all round so in essence i will probably have 4-5 acres or more to make into my own sanctuary, The long term looks great for my local photography, They say that moving house or buying a house is the most stressful thing that you do in your life, It shouldnt be for us as we have done it many times, This will be the first new build and its quite exciting and scary all at the same time, My driving license runs out at the end of next week so early next week i have to retake it which is a pain, The new owners want the top floor repainted as its all white at the moment and the government is being slow in sorting our visas out, Add all that with dog sitting ect and there have been a few sleepless nights, The new land is mainly woodland, The house will be central with a long drive up to it so nice and private, There is a small wetland section so dragonflies etc should be good and there is a couple of small grassy areas in the woodland so that will be great for deer and bird set ups, There are some nice characterful trees for my night time opossum/raccoon and fox stuff so i will have a few blinds set up around the property for myself and hopefully those that want to learn the art of wildlife photography, The house will also have a studio in it for portraits and times when its miserable outside, Its a dream really for me, I had 2.5 acres when i lived in France and its a good size plot that allows untold possibilities, So we have a list of stuff to do and on that list is the new PC, It seems a while since i ordered it but in reality its only a couple of weeks, The Motherboard has changed from an Asus to a Gigabyte and the build started yesterday so i am hoping that it will be shipped either today or tomorrow-another tick off of the list, A couple of days decorating to finish the house off and some boxes to pack and then i think the best thing to do is grab the camera gear and head off out somewhere to get my head back into some order

http://photojojo.com/store/ a fun page of everything that you will never need but will make some good Xmas gifts

Dave

Big Butterfly Count coming soon

Regular readers will know that I enjoy seeing and photographing the butterflies that come through my garden and around my local patch.  with the much warmer weather at least, butterflies are coming out in quite big numbers now.

The Butterfly Conservation  are interested to hear from you about your sightings, and in the same way that the RSPB do their Big Garden Bird Count each year so it is with butterflies also.  Unlike the BGBC, with butterflies you have a two week window starting this weekend.  Details can be found here so you can either do it in your garden or at other locations.

It would be great if a good number of our readers in the UK could also do this and if so, we would like to hear of your results.

I will be doing mine through the garden so will let you know in due course.

Great book for butterfly ID can be found below and should be a must have in all wildlife enthusiats reference library.

Martin

Carry a camera at all times

I read that some people carry a camera at all times and some say that a Dslr is just too big to carry around and others have a compact just in case, The last couple of weeks i have had my D3s and 24-70 plus flash gun with me at all times, I have been busy looking at houses as ours is sold and having some pics for reference can help in the decision process, Yesterday we had a long day out on the road looking at lots of property, We stopped to grab a coffee at a well known coffee house and on the way back to the car my sharp eyed wife called me over and asked what was stuck on the side of a crape myrtle tree in the car park, On closer inspection it was obviously a moth and a very large and beautiful moth at that, I grabbed the camera out of the car and took a couple of picks before deciding to grab the flash and add some fill light to the moth, The crape myrtle had 4 or 5 small trunks and made getting the lens and flash difficult to get in position, At the end of the day i was very glad to have a decent camera with me to document a new specie for me, The flash certainly helped bring out the blue in the spots on its back, Looking at my field guide it turned out to be a Giant Leopard Moth (ecpantheria scribonia) a very large moth not far short of 4'' long, I wish i had my macro lens with me but in a way i like the wide angle approach which shows some habitat, I know carrying your camera gear around with you in the car can be a pain as well as a worry that it will get stolen but how many times have you cussed for missing a one off situation, Make sure that your gear is well insured and that it IS covered for being in the car

Dave

Garden - Wildflower update

With the strange weather patterns this year, the wildflowers in the garden have been coming out at slightly different times, but this year has definitely been better than last.  Whether that is because my management is getting any better or whether it is a time related thing I don't know, but it has been pleasing to see some great blooms, and certainly the birds and particularly the butterflies have been taking advantage.

Here are just a few images that I have been taking recently.

Purple Loosestrife by the pond

 Ox Eye Daisy

Fabulous mass of poppies

Well I had a cracking day at Silverstone yesterday and enjoyed watching the Swallows darting and hunting low over the track picking up flies and insects on the wing, while watching the Formula 1 Grand Prix cars splashing their way round in the wet.  Fabulous action and sounds, but no images to share as I went primarily to enjoy the spectacle as from my vantage point photography was poor due to various trackside bits of clutter and granstand stanchions.  So enjoy the show if you are either there tomorrow or plan to watch it in the television

New Guy in Town

A couple of weeks ago i found our ponds resident Common Whitetail dead on our patio, I dont know if he flew into the storm door or if it was in a fight with another dragonfly which is more than likely, Well its place has been replaced with another large dragonfly which now competes for space with the other resident Blue Dasher, I am not sure of the specie of the new arrival, Its quite a bit bigger than the Dasher, I thought it looked like a seaside dragonlet but its much bigger so i will have to have a trawl through the internet, The new guy takes pride of place on the stick i placed there leaving the dasher to perch on leaves or grass, I nipped out with the D7000 and 200-400 to grab a few images, It was quite breezy but that worked to my advantage as the leaf that the dasher was perched on was turning my way giving good top views of the dragonfly, I shot at F8 and had a shutter speed around 1/1000 and was lucky that most images were nice and sharp considering i was hand holding and it was breezy, The small pond has been great for attracting all kinds of wildlife and we now even have dragonfly larvae in it which will keep the tadpoles on their toes,

The new guy

 Blue Dasher loves to pose with its tail up

I used some fill flash as the light was harsh

Dave