Visiting Hedgehog

I haven't noticed a Hedgehog this week. This happens sometimes. It might be the usual route has been blocked by something so it takes a while to find another way. This photo was taken about ten days ago. I just managed the one shot before it made a dash for cover.





I think this is the one which visits most nights.

Friday at the Flicks - Supper for Mrs Great Tit

Mrs Great Tit had just settled on the nest for the night when Mr GT arrived with her supper.




This time it seemed that Vimeo was playing silly billies and uploading was taking an age so I switched back to YouTube which ran very smoothly.

I spent ages today trying to get some streaming video to work. The method I used last time doesn't want to play with the new router and one site I could get to work had too much advertising.

What a Whopper

As usual I added a pack of strawberries to my delivery from Asda. First lucky thing was the usual £1 pack I ordered was out of stock so a £2 pack was sent but only charged at £1.  They were quite a mix of sizes but by far the monster of the batch was this one photographed next to a 10p coin which measures 22mm across (just under an inch).



These strawberries came from Spain and were reasonably tasty.

Home From Home

Sort of - garden room anyway.....

iPhone4 with wide angle lens added

Needless to say the more expensive items are only out there when I am actually using the summerhouse.

Minibeasts

When I was teaching in Primary School my favourite nature lesson was one where the children worked in small groups of 3 or 4, each group having their own square metre of ground to explore for minibeasts. All those small creatures which hide in holes and under things. This morning when I was tidying up the part of the garden next to the summerhouse I moved a small pile of old bricks. As there were several minibeasts using them as a home I grabbed the laptop and the endoscope to see what I could record:

millipede, woodlice and small slug


Minibeasts 01 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.

I need the practice in keeping the little camera still and far enough away for things to stay in focus - 60mm or more. With small creatures it is tempting to get too close, also the laptop screen was very hard to see in the brilliant sunshine. I will have to think of some form of sunshade for it - possibly a cardboard box on its side might do the job.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

A full house for last week's Guess What. Congratulations and a virtual gold star to TexWisGirl, Bonnie, Adrian and Shirley who all correctly identify a bird feather. I have no idea which bird shed it except that it was a small one.



   


A different way of presenting this week's puzzle object. Today I found an interesting free iPhone app - SymbolGram - which will work on the iPad though the results are low quality. The app can use all sorts of shapes to mask photos. There are over one hundred to choose from. Photos can be rotated and resized, text can be added as can a few choices of background colour. I hope that an iPad HD version will be made as I found it real fun to use. The app is supported by advertising at the bottom of the screen and doesn't seem too distracting.

Anyway - here are a few different views of the same creature as produced in the app.
Guess What sort of creature I have hidden:

 

 


No prizes for a correct guess, just for fun.

Newly Hatched Tadpoles

The first full post completed on the laptop. How nice to be able to compute and take in some fresh air at the same time. Lovely to sit here and listen to all the bird song.

Things keep catching me by surprise this Spring so I shouldn't have been surprised to see tadpoles swimming around this morning. These are from a batch of frog spawn I transferred from the pond to the 'nursery pool' a few days ago.:


Tadpoles 1 from Midmarsh on Vimeo.


The video was taken with an endoscope camera hand held just above the water surface. Low quality as it only has 300K pixels but it is small, waterproof, has 4 LED lights built in, focuses from 6cm to infinity, plugs in a USB port and has a 7m cable. Another reason I wanted a laptop - hopefully to be able to get some underwater video in the pond.