Macro on Monday - Guess What

Congratulations and a virtual gold star to Adrian, Sue Garrett and Ragged Robin who worked out that last week's Guess What was a close view of a pine cone.





    


On to this week's mystery macro, not the fly but the plant....
Guess What:




Clue: Attracts insects now and birds later in the year.

No prizes. Just for fun.
Guesses left in the comments, along with the answer, will be revealed next Monday.

Large White Butterfly - Mating Attempt

Not a favourite flutter with everyone, the Large White. Often called Cabbage White as they like to lay their eggs in large numbers under brassica leaves. The caterpillars can strip the leaves in no time at all.

My large Buddleia bush has produced a magnificent show of flowers this year and they have been attracting dozens of bumble bees and a few butterflies. At first I thought I was just filming a couple of white flutters but on watching the video I could see that the male, fluttering about, was trying to mate with a couple of females. The females are the ones with two black spots on each wing.



When the female opens its wings and raises the abdomen it is a sign of refusal as she has probably already mated. Source: Journal of Comparative Physiology - you may have to click on the Look Inside link to read the relevant section.

Filmed hand held with a Nikon Coolpix S9050

Time Lapse Clouds

As it was pleasant after tea yesterday I set up the 350D to take a series of time lapse photos of the passing clouds. It was so long since I last did this I had forgotten the best interval to use. I started with one every 45sec and changed it a couple of times so it ended with one photo every 20sec. I must remember next time that something like 1 every 15sec is about ideal.

This is a couple of hours compressed to about 30secs of video made from 330 individual photos:



As usual I used "Images to Video" A simple, freeware program. I downloaded the latest version on the laptop and did the conversion there and then added the title and soundtrack in trakAxPC on the PC.

Friday at the Flicks - Stock Doves

How the Stock Dove got its name:
From Wikipedia:
"The word "stock" in the common name of this species refers not to the stock of trade, but comes from the Old English "stocc" meaning "stump, post, stake, tree trunk, log,". Therefore, "Stock Dove" means roughly "a dove which lives in hollow trees"^. Such hollow trees near human settlements would often be taken and used as wood stock for firewood, hence the name."

As well as using hollows in trees they have been known to use rabbit burrows.

A short video of the pair which visited the garden a few days ago:



Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Stock Dove

Every now and then I am graced by the visit of a Stock Dove. A few days ago two soent most of the day in and around the garden. They were very nervous and flew off at the slightest disturbance. Fortunately they only went as far as a high branch in a nearby tree and soon returned to see what scattered seed they could find.



I trust those in the UK Midlands, amongst others,  survived yesterday's slow moving storm. I kept an eye on one of the sites which shows where there are lightning strikes. Things looked very intense for many hours. One weather reporting site had video of a funnel cloud forming. Fortunately it didn't reach ground level before it disappeared.

Here the thunder storm didn't arrive until 9 p.m. ish and lasted a few hours. The cloud to cloud lightning was so bright the surveillance cameras were able to show full colour and much of the time the light was blue rather than white. The strikes must have been high up as the thunder was a lot quieter than would be expected with so many continuous bright strikes though floors and windows could be felt vibrating.

A good place to see a map showing recent lightning strikes in the UK is NetWeather  Not much around this morning I'm pleased to say.

Macro on Monday - Guess What

Congratulations and a virtual gold star to TexWisGirl, Ragged Robin and Adrian for correctly identifying the scrambled Peacock in last week's puzzle picture, taken many years ago with a Ricoh XRX 35mm SLR.








On to a proper macro for this week's puzzle photo
Guess What:


Clue: No ice cream in this one.

Answers left in the comments will be revealed next Monday along with the answer.
Just for fun - no prizes.

A Portrait of Mischief

The final two photos were cleaned up using MV's free Wire Worm plug in to get rid of the electrical cables. The originals, reduced quality: