Normally July sees me spending as much as my free time as possible out in the garden following insects about. This year, the bee season is almost finished now – I wonder if the sheer amount of sunny days means that the bees have ‘burnt out’ early? Additionally there is real pressure on forage – flowering plants also seem to have finished early, and those left have struggled with the lack of rain.
On the other hand, the one insect that seems to be loving the weather and thriving is butterflies and moths. We’ve had some cool moths in the garden this month, I really must invest in a moth trap!
I found this Herald moth when I flipped the garden table over to paint it –
And this Silver Y was roosting on one of the beehouses when I got home one evening. It was so well camouflaged against the leaves in the tubes.
I’ve been doing some more experimenting with the trail cam, using with close up filters to allow the camera to focus closer on the birds. These are taken using the 1x filter.
The Blackbird appears to have started to moult – either that or the pressure of bringing up youngsters has turned him grey!
I was pleased to manage to capture this next picture, as I’m rarely seeing the adult and young Blue Tits together these days as the young birds have started to branch out on their own.
The hedgehog has not been back to the garden, though I am still putting the camera out as well as food in an effort to persuade it to become a regular garden visitor! The fox, though has returned – and it seemed to spot the camera this time.
This weekend I’ve been using a 4x filter on the trailcam to get even closer shots.
It works better for still images than video, as the depth of field (the area of the frame that’s in focus) is really thin. I’m pleased with the results though, and if I can get the birds to stay in one particular part of the frame it will work well.
I’ve also managed some shots with my DSLR – I wanted to get some more shots of the fledglings as they’ll be adult birds before we know it! We had some rain this past weekend, which must be all new to them. This young Great Tit certainly seemed confused by the wet stuff thay had started falling from the sky –
There are also at least two young Blue Tits visiting the feeders regularly. I can’t get over just how tiny they are.
The squirrel has started visiting the garden again and is looking really red at the moment. I think this must be it’s Summer coat.
Finally having had a decent amount of rain this weekend means the frogs are once again moving around the garden. I nipped out on Sunday evening at dusk as the rain had just started falling and they were everywhere.
It’s so good to see the rain. I can only do so much with a hose, even after just a couple of days of rain the plants are looking lush and green again. Never thought that living in Manchester I would say that I missed rain – I’ll certainly appreciate it a lot more in future!
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