Dead flower masquerding as frail, semi-transparent moths? Or are the moths getting together for purposes of their own, and disguising their negotiations by masquerading as a flower? Either way, winter comes.
This canal — and its birdlife — have featured once before, in Slaithwaite. But whereas that’s a fairly rural spot, this picture was taken in the midst of the industry of Huddersfield itself. Still, it delivered a mallard so superbly lit it might have employed a Hollywood lighting director, which graciously posed in the midst of slurping up the nearby vegetation.
The last few days have seemed a bit drab colour-wise. But the blue skies returned today. This peacock butterfly (not a red admiral, as I originally identified it — apparently) was enjoying the local buddleia bounty.
Whatever the reason for the journey, travelling on the Cumbrian Coast rail line is always an aesthetic pleasure. If the windows of the carriage are clean, that’s even better.
The recent rains have made the river frisky, and though the ducks’ usual mid-stream gathering place, this little island, is under water at the moment this just seems to give them an excuse to enjoy a paddle. They seem quite sociable about it.
There is something statuesque about this jackdaw, I think. Like he’s posing and ready to launch a discus like an ancient Greek athlete. Perhaps that is why I have gone monochrome for the day.
On 2nd July 1999 Clare and I were married at the Ashton Memorial in Lancaster, and today we were back there with some friends and family for a 20th anniversary reunion, which was small-scale, informal and a great deal of fun. It was excellent to just hang out with the people we’re still in touch with and see how things have changed — or not — across those two decades. “20 years eh? Blimey” was the general conversational tone of the day, but that was fine.
But although I do try to make these blog pix more-or-less representative of the day… Look! it’s a meerkat watching us! And meerkats are not the usual fauna you expect to see, not in Lancaster on a Saturday morning anyway. But there it was, in the small zoo that is up on the top of the hill by the Memorial. So though I agonised briefly about this choice, sorry, but the meerkat wins. Too cute by half.
Working at home this morning, this thing starts crawling up the wall with its extraordinarily long legs. Imagine translating those legs to human size, they’d be thirty feet tall, you’d be one of the tripods from War of the Worlds. But seeing as it only has six of them — a spider this is not….
Another of Hebden Bridge’s resident birds makes a reappearance on the blog — 8/11/15 was the same Muscovy duck, for instance. Not that it looks very happy about it today. Perhaps it’s just glum about the gloomy weather, the same as the rest of us.
It’s always good when one of the local heron population is posing in the morning on an otherwise photographically inert day.
Who knows for sure whether this is the same specific bird I’ve pictured before but (allowing for the foreshortening effect of me having taken today’s shot from about 30 feet above the heron’s head) the markings certainly look indistinguishable from those of our old friend Humph, as seen on 25/5/16 for example. How long do herons live, I wonder?
