Signs of Autumn

Now we are in the Meteorological Autumn the dewy mornings are making all the spiders' webs in my lawn stand out

Friday at the Flicks - House Sparrows & Stretch Spiders

One particularly hot day many of the local House Sparrows spent a lazy time Sunbathing on my shed roof. Who says their numbers are in decline? Here they have been breeding well this year:




I have tried several time to video the Stretch Spiders which build their webs between the plants in my garden pond. They seem to re-build them every day, if not more than once a day. This is the best I have managed so far. The webs are large and they work so quickly it isn't easy to try getting in really close:



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Spidery Baubles

Another morning when the spiders' webs were covered in dew drops:





Each showing an upside down view of the front garden and rays from the morning Sun.

Webs Eye View

Very misty morning on Monday which showed up many of the spiders' webs.
These were taken with the Nikon S9050 looking through webs, processed in Photomatrix Pro using the Grunge Detail Enhancer then cropped in Irfanview:

Every Step Could Destroy a Habitat

It felt like the start of the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness this morning. Woke up to be greeted by thick fog. On our early morning walkabout visibility was a lot less than 200 yards.

After the Sun had finally broken through I could see what initially looked like small grey patches all over the lawn. There were dozens of them. On closer inspection I could see they were spiders' webs covered in water droplets, each not more than 2 inches (5cm) across. Time to grab the 50D with 70-200mm zoom plus Raynox close up lens for a few hand held macro shots:









Once the heat of the Sun had dried them out all became invisible once again so the chances of my foot steps destroying several of these tiny spider homes became a real possibility.


I keep forgetting to mention that we still have at least one regular Hedgehog visitor. Penny always makes it her first priority every night to have a look round for spiky visitors. She is now used to their presence and just has several investigations but doesn't try to harm them.