Saturday 23 July 2016

Grasshoppers and Greenfinches

The temperature has reduced a little from earlier in the week but it’s still fairly warm, hovering between about 20 and 25 °C.
I have noticed that the birds are starting to be a bit less active. The majority have finished nesting and the earlier hatching juveniles are at the point where they are started to get their adult colours and are nearly able to fend for themselves.
Whilst these cygnets are still with their parents, they are nearly adult size and were feeding for themselves. This might well be the same swan family that I have featured here before given their location.
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Whilst out by the river I tried to capture some photos of the swallows swooping over the water to catch insects. It is amazing to stand on a bridge and watch them shoot towards you. Sometime they fly really close to your head and other times they swoop low and go underneath the bridge. The best I managed to get was this:
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This young blackbird was in the garden today, clearly now able to feed itself.
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There are a few younger birds around though, like these baby goldfinches who were still waiting to be fed by their parents.
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One final bird to share with you today, a robin sat on an old railway bridge:
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I’ve seen lots of invertebrates over the last few days including yet another butterfly species- this is a Large Skipper.
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I was walking along a street when I managed to spot this gorgeous Ghost Moth on a telephone pole. The name is perhaps appropriate seeing as though it was right outside the local cemetery.
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I’ve seen lots of Cinnabar Moth caterpillars on ragwort this week. They are very distinctive and as ragwort often grows on the edge of paths they are really easy to spot. Ragwort is of course poisonous plant and therefore the caterpillars are poisonous too.
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I haven’t featured a spider here for a few weeks now so here’s Tibellus oblongus. They don’t build webs and instead go and hunt their prey- it looks like this one was successful.
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There’s a lot of grasshoppers chirping away in the long grass at the moment so I took it upon myself to get a photo of one. What with being tiny, hidden in long grass and able to fly that proved rather tricky but eventually I captured this one. It’s probably a Common Field Grasshopper.
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Finally, here’s today’s obligatory deer photo:
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