Macro on Monday - Guess What

Brilliant - another full house of correct guesses for last week's mystery photo. Congratulations and the virtual gold star to Sue Garret, TexWisGirl, Adrian, Glo and ImaBurdie who all correctly worked out it was a scrambled photo of a wasp nest which was built in a nestbox three years ago.









Back to real macro shots for this week's mystery photo.
In fact this week you can have a BOGOF*

What are these?
    

Not two views of the same thing - two related items from the same creature.

Clue: One cosy and one uplifting.

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

*BOGOF - buy one, get one free

Hedgehog Visitor

A few days ago I moved the Hedgehog house to a position where I could connect up the camera. At the same time I changed the old B/W board camera for a small colour one which is designed for bird boxes. This one has white LEDs built in. The idea was to entice any Hedgehog into the house by scattering crushed peanuts inside in the hopes I would get some video of it. I wasn't sure whether the bright white light might be too strong for a nocturnal animal



The first couple of nights I also scattered crushed peanuts outside as well as inside so the hog ate those and didn't venture in the house, not while I was monitoring anyway. Last night I forgot to put any outside and lo and behold hoggy ventured inside. Nothing like the lure of food to entice an animal where you want it to be.




If you are thinking of putting out some peanuts for Hedgehogs make sure you use unsalted ones. Those sold for bird food are ideal but will need to be broken or crushed in to smaller pieces. Also a small bowl of water would be appreciated by any passing hog. Not milk as their system cannot digest it and will make them very ill.

Red Sky at Night ...

... sailor's delight. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning.
Is there any truth in a weather saying which has been around for hundreds of years? There is an interesting explanation on Everyday Mysteries.

Last night gave one of the most gorgeous Sunsets I have seen for a long time. As always it only lasted maybe fifteen minutes while I stood and gawked and took lots of photos.

Just a few:







The Nikon wasn't able to pick out all the subtleties I could see as there were patches of fine cloud formations with subtle changes in colour.

When is a Butterfly not a Butterfly .....

.... when it is pretty and looks like a butterfly to me but .....

As we were trolling* home down the lane this flutter landed on the path. I knew I had seen one like it only once before so took a few photos. After looking on several butterfly identification sites it was nowhere to be seen. Then the penny dropped. Not a butterfly - a moth.

In this case a Magpie Moth: (Abraxas grossulariata)





Unfortunately I have no new videos for this Friday.

* troll, from the Middle English trollen, to stroll.

When Green Becomes Grey

Yesterday was a day for another experiment with the Fujifilm IS-1. This time fitted with a green filter and the shots saved as greyscale in the camera:











All the above were auto adjusted using Irfanview which gave better results than trying the same thing in Elements.

The final one was given a different treatment, this time using Paint.NET and choosing a Metallize effect filter:



It ended up looking as though it was taken in bright Moonlight instead of bright Sunlight, a dramatic effect I quite like.

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.

Not a Bank Holiday for Everyone

Last week one of the nearby fields was harvested. Yesterday, August Bank Holiday, it was being ploughed in preparation for the next crop:




As far as I can tell this is a chisel plough used for deep ploughing on compacted soil. It breaks up the soil letting air in but it doesn't turn the soil so as to retain moisture. Also it leaves the stubble on top to rot down slowly which acts as a mulch to help retain moisture.




Today it was still a hive of activity, the plough being swapped for a disc harrow.
As usual the work had attracted the attention of a few gulls:.
Unfortunately the activity was on the far side of the field on a hazy morning.





Meanwhile in a quieter part of the field something else was seeing what it could glean from the freshly ploughed land:



Not much escapes the attention of a carrion crow.