Wings for Wednesday

It was a pleasure to see an adult Greenfinch at the seed feeder:



Not only that but here are two of the four juveniles which had tagged along:



I do tend to get a bit apprehensive when Greenfinches visit these days as the past three Summers they have brought finch disease to my garden. Let's hope we stay clear this year.

Another juvenile was spotted this week and I hope that this time it really was a juvenile Robin:





Finally - a bit blurry - a return visit by the Great Spotted Woodpecker:

A Strawberry and a Half

I hasten to say I did not grow this. My crop has been a miserable failure this year. This came in a tub of strawberries delivered by Asda this morning. The pot contained a mixture of what I would call traditional sizes and large sizes. This being the largest of the 'monsters'. About 50mm across at its widest.



I assumed it was a mixture of two different varieties though the pot was only  labelled with one variety name - Portola. I haven't seen such large ones from a British producer before.  They were from Vicarage Nurseries, Worcestershire. All those I have eaten were tasty and well textured, unlike some foreign imports I had earlier in the year which were tasteless and hard enough to hammer in nails.

A Sun Fly

Dull start to the day but it soon turned out to be sunny with a mix of blue sky and white clouds. For only the fourth time this year I sat out in the garden with my trusty Sony Walkman blasting through headphones to drown out what a friend always calls 'Black and Decker Day'. A time when everyone seems to be mowing lawns and trimming hedges with a variety of mechanical aids.

From time to time I would have a wander across to the pond to see what was about. Quite a few hoverflies and one bobby dazzler in particular:



Can't say I had noticed this type before so had a quick Google ('they can't touch you for it' as Ken Dodd would say) and quickly found its likeness on the microscopy-uk site HERE which has many very clear photos making identification easy. It turned out what had visited the pond was a Sun Fly (Heliophilus pendulas)



The golden yellow is very bright and really stood out in the sunlight.

No Video Today

For ages now I have had real problems uploading to YouTube and Flickr.. After lots of experimentation I have come to the conclusion my new router may be faulty. My internet provider, Zen, has today said they will send a replacement so hopefully all will be back to normal in the near future. It's no fun when it can take up to four hours to upload a 50MB video. if it uploads at all. I can get a reasonable upload speed with my old router but that lacks some facilities I rely on and any way the new one should work just as well if not better. Technology is supposed to improve as time goes on, not deteriorate!

Some Surprises Are Nice .........

Yesterday it was a very pleasant surprise to see for the first time in the garden not one but two juvenile Robins? which seemed quite at home investigating all the places where seeds could be found.

Keith suggested these are juvenile Dunnocks so I had another look round the internet. I only found one site which had photos of a juvenile Dunnock and a juvenile Robin where the differences were clear. Looking at the shape of the beak (the Dunnock's is finer) and the colour of the legs (the Robin's are darker)  it would appear that Keith is correct. A lot of photos on the net seem to be wrongly identified which made things very confusing for me. Also it appears that a lot of people have trouble telling which is which, me among them.







Some Surprises I Could Do Without ......

The day before delivered a surprise which was more of a shock than anything. I was busy on the computer and the back door was open to let Penny come and go as she pleased. I noticed her come in the room but couldn't see what she was doing. She kept whining and coming across to me but I took little notice until I had finished with the 'pooter. Looking to see what Penny was up to I saw she had brought in a dead, part eaten Wood Pigeon. I was not best pleased and told her so very firmly. I disposed of it at the back of one of my compost bins which has a narrowish opening at the top of the front. I though no more about it until I saw madam coming across the lawn with the same object in her mouth. She must have leapt up to get in the bin. On my second attempt I disposed of it in a fully enclosed container. It still sends shivers down my spine when I recall the event.

I know Penny chases after the Wood Pigeons but they fly away before she gets near them. I am sure this one was dropped by a passing raptor . It looked well plucked and search as I could I found no feathers around the garden.

Two iPhone Panorama apps Compared (Photosynth, DMD Panorama)

I have two panorama photo apps on my iPhone so the other day I decided to test them with a couple of views each taken on both apps.  The apps in question are Photosynth, a free app from Microsoft, and DMD Panorama produced by Dermandar. £1.49 at the time of writing though the price does drop to free from time to time. Both are available for download in the iTunes app store. Both apps automatically take the series of shots and stitch the result automatically with no opportunity for the photographer to have any say in what is going on.
These panoramas are exactly as produced by the apps on my iPhone4.

First view taken at the end of my lane where the track peters out to arable fields.

Photosynth:


DMD Panorama:


The second view is across the field from the lane which is about two feet below the level of the field:

Photosynth:


DMD Panorama:


The first thing which stands out is the difficulty I had keeping the phone level for each shot with DMD Panorama. This results in an uneven horizon which should have been virtually flat in both views. The reason for this is the way each app is presented on screen while taking the panorama.

Photosynth shows what has been taken in a white rectangle and the latest view in a green rectangle. The idea is to keep the rectangles level with each other. As you move round the white rectangle moves and when the green dot meets the edge of the white rectangle the next photo is taken. I find it easy to concentrate on the rectangles and keep them reasonable well lined up. Also they are easy to see in bright conditions.


By contrast DMP Panorama shows only the present full view. Near the top of the screen are Yin and Yang symbols. These move together as you rotate the phone and the next photo is taken when they meet up. The problem I found was they were very hard to see against a bright sky and concentrating on those it was hard to keep the phone level with the resulting uneven horizon. There are text warning on screen about keeping the phone vertical but they are hard to read in bright light and I found them distracting.


From the point of view of ease of use I found Photosynth better - but - it did make a mess on stitching the sky on the second panorama view. This could be easily 'fixed' with a bit of Photoshopping but it would have been nice if the app had done a better job here. All in all though there is little to grumble about with Photosynth considering it is always a free app.

Juvenile Coal Tit

Over the past few weeks there have been many different juvenile birds visiting the garden. From my observations the very bad weather earlier in the breeding season doesn't seem to have had the drastic effect I expected. Today I was fortunate to catch a couple of brief glimpses of a juvenile Coal Tit. It was a pity it didn't stay long enough to get the video camera set up but I did manage a couple of stills. This is the better of the two: