Little and Large

There have been quite a few bees buzzing round various open flowers plus the occasional bumble bee, often resting in the Sunshine to warm up their wing muscles. The juxtaposition of these two caught my attention:



I think the little mini-beast may be a vine weevil.

Vibrance

A couple of recent photos where I have increased the vibrance to bring out the colours.

A rainbow:



Bumble bee on red Sunflower:



On a different subject - the latest proof that the world is gripped by total madness.
Found on social media:

“Full stop is 'intimidating' to young people who interpret it as a sign of anger, linguists say.”

As one person commented:

For goodness sake... no one show them an exclamation mark!

Drying Off and Warming Up

I was correct yesterday. In spite of a partially cloudy sky there was plenty of Sunshine and the temperature climbed up to a high of 25.8C



After tea and our final walkies I noticed some of the plants in hanging baskets and planters were starting to wilt. I dragged the hose out and set about giving them a good long soak in the hopes it would last a few days before they needed watering again.

There were still lots of bumble bees around the lavender plants . I noticed one on the surface of an empty planter. At first I thought it was digging a nest hole as there were other small holes in the surface of the soil.



It was only after watching and filming it with the iPhone for several minutes I worked out it was trying to dry the hairs on its body. It must have got in the way while I was watering nearby. Anyway it eventually had a little shiver to warm up its flight muscles and flew back to the nearby lavender bush.

Bumble Bees Love Lavender

My two lavender bushes are host to dozens of bumble bees at the moment



They are also starting to attract small tortoiseshell butterflies.

Trying to Keep Warm

A few days ago I spotted this large Bumblebee as it slowly crept across the green man by my front gate. It looked as though it was trying to find a warm place in the Autumn Sunshine.



I don't think I will see many today having had to dig out my thickest Winter coat for our early morning walkabout in temperatures which had dipped below 2C.

Hibiscus

The Hibiscus bush is at about its best at the moment, or was before last night's thunder storm soaked all the flowers. It has been a bit of a relief as it produced very few flowers last year and looked dead in the Spring.





Lots of bees visiting but so far no butterflies.





A bit of slow motion video.
As usual it may need 'forcing' to show in HD



All photos and video taken with an iPhone 6s

Going Slow

Adrian asked me what the video is like on the iPhone 6s.

Standard video can be recorded at 720p or 1080p HD
Also built in is a slow motion mode:
1080p at 120 frames per second and 720p at 240 frames per second.
Some modes are auto stabilised.

This is my first attempt at moving in close with slow motion set at 240 fps:


Soundtrack music by Christian Bjoerklund from the Free Music Archive.

Wondering whether these are the bees which took over the nestbox.
Love the one which videobombed the action in the last clip.
I can see me having great fun with this mode in the Summer.
Haven't worked out yet as to why the motion speeds up at the end of each clip.

For standard video the lens is quite wide angle, as with most mobile phones.
I've just had a quick go with that.
Also built in are time lapse video and panorama stills modes.

Houston, We've Had A Problem

Some time around mid-day yesterday the Great Tit nest was invaded.
A bumble bee decided to set up residence:



Soon after that Mrs GT returned with some more nesting material. The bee was hidden but as soon as it was noticed Mrs GT rapidly left the nest. She returned a short while later with more material but saw the bee as soon as she poked her head in and promptly left the nestbox. No roosting last night.

This morning Mrs GT has brought more nesting material. Each time the bee has been out of sight but as soon as she left it started to move the material where it wanted. On her last visit so far Mrs GT once again started to enter the nestbox but left almost immediately.

I did consider trying to remove the bee though it would probably return.
In the end I thought, oh well, it will be a change to see what goes on in a bee's nest.
Very disappointing though as it's the first use of the nestbox for about three years.
Let's hope Mrs GT has the time and energy to start again somewhere else.

What a change in the weather. The temperature topped 20C yesterday and could go higher today.
At least it should dry out the grass so I can get the lawn cut. I did get some new fencing put up to replace the quick bodge job behind the large tree stump. This time with reed screening which blends in better:



It will look better once the wooden parts have weathered a bit.
All being well I should be able to make a start with filling the hanging baskets today.

Red-tailed Bumblebee

Bombus lapidarius, probably a queen, just outside the back door this morning:







Quite lethargic as it was still fairly cool outside.

Busy Bumble Bee (video)

I have two large clumps of Heather in flower at the moment. Once the Sun comes out they are attracting lots of bees and the occasional bumble bee:

Wordless Wednesday

Let Me In

Not many bees visiting my hibiscus bush this year. Normally it is full of visiting insects.
I did spot a bumble bee which insisted that the way in was to try squeezing between the petals rather than fly a couple more inches and approach from the front:









Most of the honey bees seem to be attracted to the ivy at the moment.

Friday at the Flicks - Roosting Again + Bottoms Up + Panorama Experiment

After an absence of six nights the Wren spent another night sleeping in the roosting pocket.




Walking past a tub filled with Pinks in full bloom I noticed how deep the Bumble Bees had to go to get at the nectar. Good for the plant as it forces the hairy bee to brush against the pollen which will get carried to other plants to fertilise the embryonic seeds.



Some flowers are easier than others for a large Bumble Bee to gain entrance to the nectar.  Phil Gates in his blog Cabinet of Curiosities has just explained with beautiful close up photos how hard they have to work to get in the flowers of the Foxglove. See Bumblebees and the Foxglove Challenge.


Yet another experiment. The iMovie Mac app has a zoom facility called the Ken Burns effect which allows me to very easily fix a start point and size along with a finish point and size to give zoom and / or pan effects to movies or stills. This experiment started with one of my old panorama shots taken with the iPhone:



Pasted in iMovie and the Ken Burns crop / zoom effect applied to give a panned video view across the still picture:





I will have to take some more detailed panoramas around the area and see how they look as pseudo videos.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Bumbling Heather

Following a look at the great stacked shots on Adrian's Images and the way things stand out against a black background I had another stacking session with this set up using the black foam lining in a postal package:

 

 I decided to try some macro shots of the heather from my garden.

 
26 focus stacked shots


31 focus stacked shots

The black background looks better to me and I only used the LED table lamp for lighting. Later I spent some time experimented with the camera settings to get a better balance on the exposure.
 

While I was cutting the pieces of heather I had a surprise when I found a bumble bee on the under side of my secateurs. I put them down on the top of a wheelie bin, grabbed the 50D which always has the macro lens set up and managed a few hand held shots before it flew away. Afterwards I wondered how well Zerene Stacker would cope with those:

 

Much better than I expected, especially as the bee was not completely still. Six stacked hand held shots.

Friday at the Flicks - Bees on Buddleia

A couple of days ago I was processing some cloud photos in Elements. As I finished tweaking the final one the program suddenly grabbed all memory and locked up. A forced closure and restart showed that all the work had been lost. I couldn't be bothered to go through it all again.

Looking around for other photo processing software I found Paint.NET, a free program so downloaded it along with some extra free effects plug-ins to try it out. Here are a couple of early trials:

The originals:
     
Both can be enlarged.

The finished results, foreground deliberately kept dark:




Only the one video this week. While the large buddleia bush was in full flower it attracted plenty of bumble bees:



Unfortunately it has now finished flowering.

Have a great weekend observing the world around you.

Friday at the Flicks - Bumble Bee

Only one video this week. A large Bumble Bee spent many minutes investigating some chives which had gone to flower. These plants are self sown in the edge of the lawn and seem to be regularly visited by bees so I let them grow. Filmed with the Lumix TZ7 hand held only a few inches away from the bee which was too busy to take any notice of the camera.

Wings on Wednesday - Bumble Bee

While I was cutting the grass this morning I noticed this bumble bee resting on the lawn. Earlier on the Sun had been shining but by this time it had clouded over and the temperature had dropped. I guess the bee was waiting for the Sun to shine again or having to generate the temperature needed to get its flight muscles working - somewhere around 30C.



It stayed in the same place for about half an hour before flying off.

Wings on Wednesday - Bumble Bee

Every time the Sun shines out come various insects including the bumble bees. This one was out on a rather cool day and I think it was having problems getting its wing muscles up to the temperature needed for flight.





That would have been a bit of a problem as it needs a wing muscle temperature of 30C to fly and the air temperature was around 8C.  The best it could do was to crawl along the piece of wood it had landed on.

Friday at the Flicks - Insects Around the Garden

The first set of video clips were taken a few years ago but I don't think I have used them before. Sorry the Broad Bodied Chaser is a bit fuzzy. It must have been taken three years ago as I haven't seen one in the past two summers. It was put together as a practice session using AVS Video Editor.

This originally had the short piece of Ravel's Bolero produced using an old MIDI file played back through a Roland keyboard. Photobucket rejected it as their software assumed it was copyright. YouTube's software assumed it was EMI copyright so I challenged it. To date YouTube have passed it on to EMI for them to check. This version uses a Protracker MOD file in which the composer just asks for acknowledgement if it is used, which I have done at the end of the video.

The soundtrack is a bit louder than I intended:



The second video is of the bumblebees on a lavender plant. I am not sure what is going on with some bumblebees recently. Some seem to spend the night clinging to a flower. Some suddenly stop while feeding and freeze for several minutes before flying away. I have not noticed this happen in the past. Are they near the end of their life span or are they suffering from attack by the same mite which has been decimating honey bee hives?



 Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Wings for Wednesday

There are two plants in the front garden which are attracting plenty of winged creatures at the moment. Lavender and Hibiscus.

Bees:




Hoverflies:




Flies:


Wasps:


Notice anything missing? Butterflies! Last year the lavender especially was a great attraction for butterflies. To date this year I haven't seen one on or near these plants.

All photographs were taken with the Lumix TZ7, usually with the lens within three inches of the insect. Not a problem with the bees and hoverflies but can be a bit fraught when it comes to wasps.