Nest Building This Morning

In real time for once:



Mrs GT works hard in bursts every so often.

Another Busy Day Nest Building

Speeded up again:




Stop Press:
Caught sight of our first spiky visitor for this year.
Unfortunately I was too slow to capture the Hedgehog on video.

Nest Building Starts

Sunday afternoon saw a flurry of activity in the camera nest box.
Mrs Great Tit can be seen here, speeded up:



Unfortunately a local thunderstorm arrived and heavy rain stopped play but at least she has made a good start. Not at all bad for just over 20 minutes hard work.

In spite of this morning dawning cold and frosty Mrs GT started bright and early fetching more moss to continue with the nest building.

Spring on Hold

The bit of warm weather was short lived. Plenty of gusty cold wind and temperature back to single figures for much of the time. That didn't stop the frogs which continued to produce their spawn:



It looks as though there are about sixteen lots in the garden pond. This should continue to develop when the temperature starts to rise again.

When I was checking through the video clips I took of the newt attacking the first batch of frog spawn I could see there were two of them. A male and a female:



The male with his light coloured belly with black spots can just be see towards the top right of the clip which I have slowed down.

Popped Primula

Unlike other apps I have used for colour popping, iSplashColors for the mac gives three choices for the background - greyscale, sepia and the cyan tones I used this time. Vignetting can also be added. There is some control over the saturation of the colours.

Sleepy Bee

This morning I noticed this bee sleeping and sheltering in just the right position to escape the worst of yesterday's strong, cold, gusty wind.

   

Left hand photo - crop from the Nikon S9050
Right hand photo - focus stacked 7 hand help  shots

A Frog He Would A-wooing Go

A frog he would a-wooing go,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a rowley, powley, gammon and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.

So starts the old nursery rhyme.
It has a rather sad ending but hopefully the local frogs will live to tell the tale:



At least two pair of mating frogs, lots of spawn and a forlorn looking wallflower(*):







That makes at least five lots of frog spawn in my garden pond so far.





It looks like being a bumper year for spawn.



If you don't know, or have forgotten, the nursery rhyme there is a beautifully illustrated old version on the Gutenberg site HERE.  (You may have to dismiss a 'welcome' box and then click on the 'read this book online HTML' choice, unless you want to download a version.)

(*) Wallflower -  a person who stays on the fringes of a dance or party on account of lacking a partner or being shy.