An early start on campus but it’s my last day there for a little while. This picture gets in today more for the pattern in the background than the plants themselves: these are tiles on the ground but perhaps they could be particularly regular clouds.
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.
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.
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.
I know this isn’t the flower known as violet (genus Viola), but it’s certainly the colour. I bet these look pretty good in black-light. Taken on the one twenty-minute occasion on which I got out of the house today — the sun was shining, the Late May Fine Period is properly here, but I had work to do.
“Ssshhh. They’re asleep, I think. We can sneak in….”
“I feel scared. The water….”
POSTSCRIPT (feel free to ignore): You should have had a picture from London today. Specifically, I was going to go inside the Houses of Parliament for the first time in my life. However, thanks to an exquisitely timed cancelled train today — eradicated 10 minutes too late for me to get an earlier one — I couldn’t make it to King’s Cross in time for the event. So there was no point going. So Northern fuck up my day, and I get to just suck it up.
The annual outcrop of bluebells is another one of those recurring themes, and now is the time for it to recur. There seem to be a lot this year. I don’t think this picture captures the extent of the carpet, but I like the focus on it. One flower in particular is definitely the point of attention.
Being 42 