Lithops Flower

This is only the second of my Living Stones (Lithops) to produce a flower so far.
By way of an experiment I took photos at 1, 3 and 5 days as the flower appeared.
This is an experiment using the Mac app MorphX (free when I downloaded it) to blend the progress over the 5 days. A bit rough as the shots were hand held and I didn't managed to get the same point of view each time. In fact these photos were taken before I installed MorphX. The video was an afterthought.





Not the best looking of flowers but the ability of the app to morph between photos worked reasonably well and is something I will try again in the future, taking more care with the positioning of the camera.

To give an idea of how MorphX works here is a screen shot:


 
Two photos are loaded. Draw lines on the left hand photo for morphing reference points. These are automatically repeated on the right hand photo and need adjusting to the correct places. Then tell the app to make a .mov file. I had three photos so I made two morphed movies. This time it produced 30 frame (1 second) movie files. They were slowed down and cropped in iMovie for the finished video. I also extended some stills to give time to see each stage.

It's Definitely Working

A while ago I mentioned I now have a system which could detect lightning strikes but until last night there had been no opportunity to see how well it works. All that changed as an area of heavy rain and electrical storms swept through this area.

It counts the strikes and works out how far away they are. It also displays whether they are approaching:



or moving away from me.




I really must get round to finding out why the rain gauge on this system stopped working. Probably some small item lodged in the tipping bucket.

Wow, did the rain come down. My main weather system recorded 20mm (3/4 inch) of rain in 14 minutes - no wonder my lane looked more like a fast flowing river at the time.

As for photographic opportunities. That was a wash out. All I saw was sheet lightning, cloud to cloud above the lowest layer of clouds.  There must have been some cloud to ground strikes as we lost electric power for a short while. Probably a strike on the overhead lines which cross the Lincolnshire Wolds.

The unit used is the Ventus W266 weather station.

Monday Mystery - Guess What

Congratulations and the virtual Midmarsh Gold Star to Wilma, Adrian and Ragged Robin. Yes, last week's mystery mosaic photo was indeed of a dragonfly:





OK. Here we go with this week's mystery mosaic photo.
Guess What:
 

Please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.
No prizes just the possibility of a virtual Midmarsh Gold or Silver Star.

The Other Daddy Longlegs

Another creature which has very long legs compared with the size of its body is the Harvestman. Often called a spider but is in fact a close relative of the spiders. Spiders have two segments to the body but all the sections of a Harvestman are fused into one. Also the Harvestman has no venom glands or silk glands. They do not spin webs.

This beauty was blending in well with the cracks on a wooden door:





With a body just 7mm long the outstretched legs measured a maximum distance of 100mm.
A composite made with six hand held focus stacked photos:



As always Zerene Stacker was used to produce the finished result.

Two Very Different Youngsters

Unfortunately I didn't manage to grab any new video this week.
Here are a couple of youngsters I saw yesterday.

First a Common Green Shieldbug.
Looks to me to be a 5th instar, one stage away from being an adult:


There is a good set of illustrations showing the different growth stages of British shieldbugs on the BritishBugs site.

This is what it will look like when fully grown:
 

The other was a juvenile Goldfinch which is just beginning to get its colours:





Here is an adult in its full colour:
 

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Daddy Long-legs

Spotted this Crane Fly outside a window this morning:



An aptly named Daddy Long-legs. This must be one of the largest I've seen at a good 60mm across.

Holly Blue

I often see small blue butterflies flitting about the garden but Sunday was the first time I have seen them land. I was tidying up at the bottom of the garden when I noticed several different flutters were landing on the Ivy growing over my fence from the property behind me. Among them were several Holly Blue butterflies so I spent a while making sure I got some shots of them:







By the markings I think they were all females.
It was interesting to see that some of the larger butterflies often seemed to be chasing the blues away.