Wet, Wet, Wet + Woody Returns

No, not the Scottish band, my back garden. Teatime yesterday started with distant thunder but so strong it could be felt through the concrete floor in the kitchen. Fortunately the electrical storm passed over without any local problems apart from the electricity supply flickering off from time to time.

That wasn't the worst though. Suddenly the heavens opened with such stair rods of rain and hail the like of which I last saw decades ago as a child. According to my new weather centre the rate of rainfall reached 65mm / hour (2.5 inches / hour). Thank goodness that didn't last for an hour. As it was, 27mm (just over an inch) of rain was recorded in less than an hour.

The lane was a river with water flowing rapidly down from the main street and my back garden ended up about 3/4 under water. That lot was just rainfall and overflow from the gutters which couldn't cope. Normally it takes several hours of persistent rain to flood that much. Fortunately the building, garage and sheds are well above that level.





It had only just dried out after the last rainfall.

Once the rain had moved out to the North Sea Woody made his second visit of the day:



He is becoming quite a regular at the moment.

A bit of very shaky hand held video which iMovie did its best to stabilise:



It really cheered me up to see such a magnificent bird visiting the Birdy Bistro.

June Moon

As the sky looked reasonably clear late yesterday evening I set up the 70D on a sturdy tripod to take some shots of the Moon:

ISO 800  f7.1  1/400sec

ISO 160  f5.6  1/125 sec

EF 100-400mm lens set at 400mm. Different settings on the camera gave different coloured tints.
The yellowish tint in the first is nearer to what I could see.
Both photos were cropped, sharpened and detail enhanced in iPhoto.

Basking in the Sunshine

First - Tricia Ryder's comment yesterday got me thinking about the mystery bird table visitor. She thought it looked like a Dunnock. Well it certainly isn't a mature one. I have several as daily visitors but a Google search for some Dunnock Juvenile photos showed several which almost matched my visitor - pale belly with bold black streaks. In fact when I search I find I had photographed a juvenile Dunnock a couple of years ago.  So it looks as though that is favourite. Whatever it is it has visited several times every day so far. Also visiting the bird table have been two juvenile Robins.

Today has been a scorcher. Cool with heavy rain and hail yesterday morning.
Many creatures have taken advantage of blue skies and temperatures up to 25C:

The Damsel flies have started emerging from my garden pond.
Here a male Blue Tailed Damselfly sunning itself on a rose bush:



and a female on a pond plant:



A Red Admiral taking a short rest:



A Dunnock looking quite bedraggled but actually having a quick sunning session:



On the cricket field a Crow which didn't really want to move out of the way, until we got too close for comfort.:



I say sunning themselves but maybe the birds were actually trying to cool down.

Is this Bird What I Think it is?

A brief visit to the bird table by a bird I haven't noticed before:



Looking through Collins Complete and double checking on t'internet I concluded it was a rare visit to my garden by a Meadow Pipit. But then I could easily be mistaken.

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tits

For about a week I have had a family of Great Tits visiting several times each day. As far as I can tell there are two adults and four youngsters.

A bit of video from the bird table:



There are a few problems with my sound recording. It only seems to happen when there are noisy House Sparrows about. For some reason their chirps seem to distort.

Surveying My Realm

A couple of days ago my attention was drawn to a couple of Carrion Crows kicking up a might din as only crows can:

Eventually one flew off and the remaining one moved to the highest point on a chimney pot and spend quite a long time just gazing around as though it was checking that all was well in his neighbourhood:

Thoughts of a Juvenile Blackbird