11 posts tagged “garden life”
This guy just about tolerates my being in his garden. If I were another male robin, though, he'd try to kill me. The solar panel he's standing on is about 5 cm (2in) square.
Even though they're noisy and continually pooping on my car, they're still charming, in a comic rough-and-tumble sort of way.
They love each other's company - starlings are the little guys that form massive swirling formations in autumn and winter. If you've never seen it, you'd never believe it. This 5-minute video is by a chap called Dylan WInter, and it's well worth a look:
They're not doing that in my garden, but it's impressive enough the way they work their way through the grubs and insects.
Ask what colour they are, and most people would say black or grey, and some would remember the speckles. It isn't until you look closely that you see the iridescent greens and blues.
This is Dad. You've met him before, and indeed, he's out in the "heat" (25 deg C - we're having our summer this weekend) singing away even now.
The Houselight family was there (in the tree at the bottom of next door's garden): Tom, Danni, and young Oliver, who far from being turfed out on his ear, is still getting fed. We spent a little time calling and bobbing at each other, as you do. (I'd claim I'm trying to see if I can get a reaction from them. Most people would just say I'm as birdbrained as they are.) And they preened and, er, stuff, and then, while Tom and Oliver went off to practise landing on TV aerials, Danni went up into the nest and laid an egg. As luck would have it, the camera was inside at that moment emptying itself into the computer. Suffice to say, it doesn't look like an altogether comfortable experience - think of Robin Williams's sketch about men "sharing" childbirth: "unless you've ever passed a bowling ball, you aren't sharing a damned thing!"
In any event, I'll spare you more dove photos - for now - because in the still-bare branches of the b*st*rd spiny tree from heck, this blackbird was giving an impromptu recital.
Tomorrow, of course, the Met Office is predicting up to 5 cm of snow.
It appears the grasshopper wasn't just paying a flying visit.
He frolics in the undergrowth.
He basks amid the flakes of rust on top of the manhole cover.
He occasionally tries to eat lavender, only to remind himself that that's really not a pleasant thing to do. (Obviously, grasshoppers have roughly the same mental capacity as sheep.)
The best part of the arrangement is that he's doing his best to keep the grass in the garden at a reasonable height.
Of course, this one doesn't have BlueTooth... But do I need a grass cutter that talks to my phone?
I'm tempted to do a Small Obsessions post with spiders, but I'm conscious that some people get squicked by the thought of them, and Vox (bless it) doesn't let one hide sections of articles away behind a click-link. Any arachnophobes out there?
It's half past eight in the morning, cloudy-dark, blowing a strong breeze from the south and threatening rain. So naturally, I'm in the garden with the camera. Amazingly, there are a few bumblebees in amongst the lavender, but that's not why we're here.
There's an almighty ruckus - chak chak chaka chakk times 3 or 4 - going on in the top of a neighbouring cypress. There's a magpie nest somewhere up there (to the despair of the Houselight Family: it's only about ten metres from their perch), and they're squabbling. They fly out, it falls quiet for a moment, only for the ruckus to start up again as they try to regain their place in the heavily swaying tree.
It's not easy. It is, however, a Photoshop opportunity. :-)
In case you're wondering about the title, it's referring to the rhymes about magpies (or crows, or ravens, depending on the indigenous wildlife): One for sorrow (or anger), two for joy (or mirth), three for a girl (or wedding, or funeral), four for a boy (or birth), and so on.
As Terry Pratchett points out in Carpe Jugulem,
There are many rhymes about magpies, but none of them is very reliable because they are not the ones the magpies know themselves.
I suspect in the case of this magpie, it's more along the lines of one for base leg, two for flaps, three for airbrakes...
I can't remember the last time I saw a grasshopper in this country. They're not that rare, and yet... Oh well.
Anyway, this little chap flew in out of nowhere to settle awhile in my rosemary bush. So naturally, once I'd fetched in the laundry and got dinner underway...
He was a little nervous of the big staring eye-in-the-sky, kept twitching his forelegs and edging around the stalk, but didn't run. For my part, I was conscious of having my face and arms brushing aganst the perovskia flower sprigs - rather a lot of honeybees were doing their thing at the time.
Things I didn't know before I took the photos
:
- Four mandibles, almost looking like vestigial legs, though presumably they're on the head rather than the thorax.
- OK, hands up everyone who knew that grasshoppers have hairy chests. Uh huh... uh huh... pretty much what I thought.
For some reason, this photo reminds me of Arte Johnson's character in Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In: Ver-r-r-y Interesting... (and ver-r-r-y worrying).
There's part of me wants to go and take pictures of things under water, but really, the last thing folks there need is another idiot sightseer. Unless he's brought drinking water with him.
So it's out to the garden again. The bees seem to be more than a little frantic - I guess after umpteen days (and millimetres) of rain, they're well behind schedule.
Anyway, today's challenge was: try to catch them in flight. Turns out it's a great way to get lots of blurry pictures of lavender (or whatever).
Getting the timing right is a bit tricky. However, patience does pay off, eventually. This little guy is just about to take off. The blurry thing in the centre of the photo is a leg, not a wing.
Gotta admit, though, I'm really pleased with this one:
In the space between the raindrops - we actually had a couple of sunny days! - the bees and things came out to do their thing. A bit quiet - this time last year there were a couple dozen buzzing about the lavender bed at any given time - but that's hardly surprising when you consider how wet and breezy it's been.
It's a real game of patience, trying to catch these little guys at work. They don't hang around: the time they spend at any one flower is less than the time it takes to find the spot in the camera, move in, let the autofocus do its thing... better to find a flower they haven't visited, frame and focus, and wait. Assuming the wind doesn't blow it out of shot at exactly the wrong moment.
Here's an "interesting" little fact.
The buzzing sound that bees, wasps, flies, etc, make isn't produced by their wings. It's air being pumped through tiny holes in their abdomen, rather like bagpipes; it just happens to use the same motors as the wings. Some bumblebees can detach the wings temporarily, and use the buzzing to shake pollen around the flower they're sitting on.
Bee farts! There's one to tell the kids for show-and-tell... :-)
