Wagtails are so named for obvious reasons, and this one was wagging its tail so enthusiastically that it’s almost disappeared from the shot. Taken with a long zoom, in fairly gloomy conditions, next to the Aire & Calder Navigation in Brighouse.
“Just out for a stroll, Mum. Hanging out with the lads, at the Football Museum, y’know.”
As seen living on a dead tree in the woods over the road. For some reason I find these very sensual-looking. It’s the whole smooth, marbly skin thing, and their curviness. Perhaps I have unfulfilled needs (which may just involve having mushrooms to eat, of course).
One reason the valley of the Hebden Water is a protected environment is because it is home to many colonies of wood ants, and something to do while walking there is go anthill-spotting in the trees. I did so today, and caught sight of this monster — at around four feet high, this is probably the biggest I have ever seen in there. A teeming, writhing metropolis of the ant world, and not something to sit on or stumble into accidentally (perhaps not yet quite at the scale of the ones in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, but they may have plans).
Scientists down the years have discovered that compared to many other species, birds are fairly intelligent creatures, and this one was clearly intent on achieving its goal this afternoon — get into a nut, using only its beak and claws. Whether it was ultimately successful I don’t know, but it was certainly putting in the effort.
A versatile flower, the rose is used for decoration, food, flavour, giving to people to indicate affection etc. Those thorns are damn prickly though. The one that has taken over one corner of our garden is an irritant rather than a decoration. This isn’t it, however; this one is to be found in Hebden Bridge town centre.
I am fond of the genre that is the Formal Sheep Portrait. They do pose — I mean, I’m not saying they know they’re having their picture taken, but they’re quite happy to stand still and check you out while you formulate the shot. This one is taken on the slopes of Irton Pike, in the west of the Lake District: it’s Muncaster Fell that is in the background, sporting a heavy growth of rhododendrons, hence the dusting of pink.
Until seeing this one close up today I had never realised what a bizarre-looking species the turkey is. Even its feathers look wrong, like it’s actually a giant pinecone with an absurd neck and head arbitrarily stuck on it. And the nose…. or whatever it is. Takes some going to carry this all off with dignity but I guess it manages it. For the next six months or so, anyway.
Another one of those recurrent, annual subjects. Our plum tree definitely has years off — and 2022 was one — but this year there’s going to be a decent crop. Previously I have referred to these as plumlets but for some reason ‘plumlings’ came to mind this time round, which I feel is definitive.
A walk to the Lakes today, and there were some nice landscape shots I could have chosen, partly because I was thinking I had done the ‘nature close-up’ theme yesterday, and partly because the Lake District is usually quite nice to look at. But those who want to see more of what it looked like around Loweswater yesterday can check out my walking blog (well, one of them anyway). In the end I chose this because the light came out just right and it was not until I looked at it a third time, at least, that I noticed the companion insect hovering just above the Orange Tip. Are butterflies insectivorous? Perhaps it should be worried.
Being 42 