Month: July 2016

  • Sunbathing Blackbird

    The blackbird is back for more! Not content with letting the sunbathing crows take all the attention, he sat on the grass and started to sunbathe. It’s a strange sight, especially when they always sit with their beak wide open. Unusually for a sunbathing blackbird, he kept moving around – maybe he wanted to get the sunlight…

  • Blackbirds and Berries

    The blackbird that featured in my previous post is back for more! Obviously those Berberis berries are just too tasty to resist. Normally when a berry has dropped from the tree, the birds ignore it but this blackbird had other ideas! He found a lone berry under the leaves and managed to pick it up neatly by…

  • Buzzy Bee

    I hadn’t realised just how many different types of bee there are, until I started 30 days wild – suddenly I was paying attention a little more, and noticing all their different colours and even shapes. What I’d always thought of as a honeybee turned out to be a bumblebee, so I was determined to…

  • Ladybird Spotting

    I was just about to take a photo of the plant growing on the edge of a garden, when I noticed a ladybird sitting on it. There’s been quite a few small ladybirds on the allotment this year, but I never seem to have my camera when I need it, to take a photo so I…

  • Butterflies

    I decided to see how many different butterflies I could spot and identify today – on just a short stretch of wild flowers on the roadside, I spotted these three…. And a few more that flew off before I could get a photo of them! This butterfly refused to open its wings further out, so I’m…

  • Natural Spring

    I live in an area full of natural springs – some suddenly appear in the middle of the road if we’ve had a particularly wet spell of weather, there’s one that will potentially be developed into a stream to provide water for a new allotment site, and there’s even some in gardens that have been developed into…

  • Roe Deer Family

    We do get some unusual wildlife around here, considering how close we are to the city centre. Last night I looked out of the window and spotted a badger running along the road, there’s at least one family of foxes, and of course the local Buzzards and Peregrine Falcons. But one thing most people would never expected…

  • Bee Moth

    Another day, another moth…. And another one that didn’t seem to appear in my moth identification book! This moth was less than an inch in length, and was sitting on the front wall today. It almost blended in perfectly with the stonework. After looking at various different photos on websites to try and identify it, I…

  • A Feast for a Blackbird

    Blackbirds have always loved our garden – one year we even had a Blackbird nest. This year we’ve let the Berberis grow berries instead of cutting it back,  and it appears to be a Blackbird’s favourite food! They don’t find it easy to perch on the bendy branches, and of course the tastiest berries are always on…

  • Mackerel Sky

    Mackerel sky and mare’s tails make tall ships carry low sails That’s not actually a weather saying I’d heard of before, but apparently both types of cloud can develop before a storm, hence the shops using low sails. Mackerel Sky relates to altocumulus clouds, getting its name from the likeness of the cloud formation to the…