Around the Garden Pond

A quick look at some of the wildlife in and around my garden pond:

Fly:


Wasp:


Pond Skater:


Not seen so far this year are any water boatmen.

Tadpole:


Pond Snail:


Stretch Spider:


Bathing Birds:

Robin:


Juvenile Goldfinch and Starling:



Miniature bullrush,  First of this year's male Blue-tailed Damselflies
  

I have spotted some newts but so far they have been too shy to photograph.

Andrena Solitary Bee?

At first I couldn't make my mind up whether this was a bee or a fly.
Size - a bit smaller and slimmer than a honey bee.





I think looking at the ends of its legs I would definitely lean towards it being a bee.
Possibly of the Andrena genus of solitary bees.

Sigma 28-80mm macro lens

Yesterday I was searching through my collection of Canon fit lenses looking for a macro lens. I was sure I should have a kit lens which comes with the 350D but couldn't find it. Instead I came across a Sigma 28-80mm f3.5-5.6 aspherical II macro lens so decided to try that. I was going to have a test run using the built in stacking facility in the Magic Lantern software I have running on the 50D but after reading various instruction on the web decided to put that on the Round Tuit pile. Instead I wandered round the garden to see what was in flower.

Here are the results; 50D using Magic Lantern. No cropping, no tweaking, just text added in Irfanview. All were taken in RAW format and saved as jpg from Irfanview:



















Plus the only bee I saw during that session:

 

The above photo cropped:
 

All were taken hand held with the aperture fixed at f10, ISO 400, some with added flash. Weather was overcast with no direct sunlight and breezy so most were moving to some extent. On the whole I am very pleased with the results from this Sigma. I'm not usually impressed with that make but this lens looks to have its uses, as does Magic Lantern once I get fully used to using the LCD screen for viewing as the mirror has to be locked up to switch over to their software.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

My thanks to all who had a go at identifying last week's mystery photo. Congratulations and virtual gold stars go to Jan, Ragged Robin and ImaBurdie who correctly identified a piece of a horsetail reed.








On to this week's puzzle photo
Guess What:
 

Can you work out what this is part of?
Clue: 40 mph couch potato

Guesses in the comments will be revealed along with the answer next Monday
No prizes - just for fun.

Feeding the Youngsters

Two Blue Tit parents have been wearing themselves to a frazzle feeding their offspring today. I don't know how many they have. Just two can be seen at the start of this piece of video but the parents were flying to various bushes nearby:



I also occasionally catch sight of our Great Tits feeding a youngster:



They are also finding food for themselves. This youngster had found the peanut feeder I put up yesterday:

Something Mother Often Yearned For

NO - not the car or the cycle with a trailer for the dogs:



NO - not to exchange the OM for two fellers:

 


She often wished she had a pony and trap, something she would have seen and used a lot in her childhood. I see this one around the village a couple of times each year but this was the first time I had a camera at hand for a few snaps and the driver obviously enjoyed having his photo taken.



Penny was very good and just stood watching as it slowly passed us and continued down the main street though the pony wasn't very keen to pass too close to Penny.  I hope they managed to reach home before the hail shower which started about twenty minutes later..

Blue Tit

Lots of parent birds are coming to the Birdy Bistro to gather food for their offspring. It is very noticeable that, apart from a few rare warm sunny periods, there is generally a lack of insect life around the area.

One of the regulars is the Blue Tit:



I don't think it could get much more in that little beak: