Macro moths

Barrie has got some extension tubes for his camera so he can take macro shots of our garden wildlife. We put the moth trap out Friday night and were really pleased to get some Elephant Hawkmoths, among many other moths.

Elephant Hawkmoth

Buff Ermine

Ebb and Flo

Our guests are soon going to be leaving us. In two weeks the change has been amazing we literally wake up to different ducks every day. They have got very bossy- they ran out of food in the pen (they eat a lot!) and they made sure we heard about it. They love coming on the allotment when we are digging to find worms but go and sit in their carrier when they want to go back to the pond. We can see them watching the other birds flying over, their own flight feathers are just coming through. We think we were very lucky with the names, Ebb has blue showing more on his head than Flo so we think he's male and Flo properly quacks, although I've never really noticed if its true that only females quack - I never thought I'd need to know.

A serene Flo

Bioblittz in the garden

Sort of bio blitzed our garden today ie walked around with a camera and photographed as many insects as I could. Not got round to identifying them all yet but amazed by the variety and how beautiful even the tiniest little fly can be. A patch of nettles was fascinating, spiders, ladybirds and various flies were hunting smaller insects and some tiny little flies were semaphoring with their wings for mates and battling interlopers. On the windowsill of the house there was a large fly seemingly guarding a territory and chasing off (mating ?) with other flies.

Blow fly that was seeing off all comers

Wasp on cotoneaster

Wood boring beetle -Hylecoetus dermestoides

14-spot ladybird - how does it manage crawling over those spines

Orange-tip

Jumping spider

Snipe fly