Your day's wildlife

[Drago]

Mini Drago is very into folklore at the moment. On our walk around Pitsford Water today she was convinced she'd glimpsed a Jack-in-the-Green in the bushes.

 

[Dave 123]

I found this today in the greenhouse at work

A western conifer seed bug. Apparently it's a recent invader from the USA.

 

[Rezillo]

[QUOTE 4910563, member: 9609"]interesting - I too have a bridge camera and it is not as good as yours for close up stuff. mine has a whopping 35x optical zoom and I'm wondering if this capability has come at the expense of close up stuff. Does yours have a dedicated macro mode ?[/QUOTE]

It does have a macro and a zoom macro mode but none of those shots used it - I was standing/crouching 2 to 3m away. I had to stand very still and wait for the dragonfly to move close enough but it was still 2m away from the pond bank. The focus area has a custom mode which is good for framing insects when set between spot and centre-weighted.

I bought it on the strength of the reviews. The zoom is not as high as a super zoom but it makes up for that in every respect. Downsides are that it is expensive and heavy.

 

[Illaveago]

I have just heard and seen quite a large group of either Swallows or House Martins swirling about overhead. They broke off into pairs and started performing dog fights. I couldn't see that they had forked tails but they looked more like young Swallows.

 

[gbb]

After a very windy night there's lots of oceanic vegetation along the long long beaches here so we just took a walk along, a bit of beachcombing if you like.

Lots of soft corals, some what I will call fan corals, some fire red corals....one dead baby turtle maybe 50mm long and masses of seaweed, lots of it.

One bright bird was scouring it...I immediately thought woodpecker or flycatcher of some kind.. a lookee when we got back found it was this...
https://birdsna.org/Species-Account/bna/species/622/articles/introduction

 

[Illaveago]

At our nature reserve open day today.

View attachment 366265

I find it really amazing how insects like these can transform themselves into a much larger and different creature.
Well done on a great picture.

 

[gbb]

Black Iguana...maybe 18 inches long

And a probable Great Egret...

Not a snowy egret, they have yellow feet and as this was a fair sized bird, difficult to ID as anything else other than a great egret.
Ironically, the lagoon these photos are from is teeming with crocodiles....I haven't seen one single one despite several visits.

 

[Illaveago]

Bees are busy in the lavender and the Dragonflies have returned to the pond and are busy.

 

[potsy]

Cannot remember ever seeing one of these in my garden, another mouth to feed

 

[MikeG]

I only had a snappy camera to hand when my wife called me saying there was a snake stuck in the strawberry cage netting, so crappy photos, I'm afraid. It took 10 or 15 minutes to free it, as some of the netting had dug in quite a way. The grass snake was weak, so may have been struggling for some time, but after composing itself for a few seconds once we'd cut it free, it disappeared off into the blackcurrants, whilst we dismantled to strawberry cage to prevent a recurrence.:

 

[Alan Frame]

A furry caterpillar and a ladybird

 

[biggs682]

Had a stare out earlier

 

[snorri]

This little fellow was merging so well with its surroundings that I didn't see it until it moved when I was I was just a couple of metres away. It then "froze" and waited for me to go and get my camera out of the pannier, but I had a job finding it again. I'm guessing juvenile turnstone?

 

[gbb]

Commuting this morning at 6am took me across old brickpits (sadly there's a large development going on so much of the wild habitat is going to be lost)...i saw a deer looking at me from a distance, started running at an angle which i knew we'd intersect a hundred metres on...and we did so i got a good look at him.
Dark edges to the prominent ears, much larger then muntjac, reddish brown but no great amount of white rump visible, lighter coloured but not white...Roe deer probably.
A mile on...another deer, small, probably Muntjac.
Green woodpecker shortly after.

 

[PollyGoesSlow]

Last night we had an entertaining 10 minutes watching the local feral peacock meeting our resident hedgehog. He really didn’t know what to make of the hedgehog, but ate all the hedgehog food anyway.