So I’m a little bit weird – live with it.
About the only good thing about having a full hard drive is that it forces me to revisit old files, looking for things I can delete. In the process, I often find images that didn’t make the cut first time around but have grown on me since. These two butterfly shots are the case in point, taken in July 2011 at Mayfield Lavender farm, Banstead, Surrey.
The large white butterfly, so prosaically named, is ubiquitous here in Surrey (and probably everywhere else in England) and it tends to get overlooked for more unusual species, but actually it is really quite pretty when you look closely. I like the eyes, with a subtle hint of green. If it was rare, we’d all be waxing lyrical about its ghostly beauty.
It’s been several weeks since I was last here. I’ve missed it. Â I just pressed the button on my dissertation! Â I can no longer tinker with it; it’s done. Â All I need to do now is bind and drop off the hard copies tomorrow. Â I am excited to be able to get back to the blog. Â I hope you haven’t all given up on me!
I couldn’t completely leave the camera alone for the whole summer. Â Here’s a shot of a lovely little common blue butterfly, captured while on holiday in Sark in July. Â See you after college tomorrow!
A few days ago I posted an image of an immature capsid bug. Here’s a shot from last year of one all grown up, surveying the garden kingdom.
Bee fly again
As the deadline for my dissertation inexorably draws nearer, and with school holidays approaching even faster, I am having to put photography on the back burner, again. But it is bug season! Not fair! I can’t ignore all that gorgeous mini-beast action in my garden completely. So here are a few shots grabbed in illicit moments away from my studies.
Capsid bug
These capsid bugs normally hang out on oak trees. Luckily, my neighbour has a whopper of an oak tree so we get a lot of extra bug action. Oak trees rock.
Really very tiny anonymous fly
This fly is so small I can’t make out the detail until I grab a macro shot and view it at native resolution on my desktop. It’s too small even for my insect field guide, so I can offer no ID. Â Do step up if you know what it is!
What am I?
This might be a moth. It too is very small, but rather cute, in my opinion.
I have a few more shots to share but I am going to have to be strict with myself about spending time on-line for the next few weeks. So sorry if I don’t manage to visit your site for a while. But, come September, there will be no stopping me!
On Tuesday, I waxed eloquent, well enthusiastic at least, about my new toy, the Fuji X-E1, but there is one thing it can’t do: decent macros of the very smallest critters in my garden. There my DSLR and macro lens rule supreme. This is an immature capsid bug showing off its gravity defying skills on a lavender leaf.
Last summer Focused Moments was speckled with posts featuring the speckled bush crickets (leptophyes punctatissima) in my garden. With our very late spring here I hadn’t seen any until this weekend. But never fear, they are back! Here an early instar stares me down from between two new camellia leaves.
Some of last year’s specky posts are here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
Well, I know it is a little unkind to my gardening friends but I had to share this picture of a greenfly and its progeny. Â Purely in the interests of enjoying their colour against the tulip, of course. Â Come on, admit it, the babies are just a tiny bit cute?
Finally, some Summer weather. The damselflies made the most of it – there were several pairs of these red damselflies mating in my garden yesterday.
A shot from last year of a rosemary beetle. Â These relatively recent arrivals in the UK may be pretty but they wreak havoc in the garden, especially the herb border. Â One shouldn’t anthropomorphise but I can’t help interpreting this one’s expression as more belligerent than guilty. Â Perhaps it is thinking of Princess Anne’s famous riposte:
You are a pest, by the very nature of that camera in your hand.Â
Focused Moments 