Friday 2nd May 2014, 4.45pm (day 981)
More avifauna. And a pic that shows we are at least a couple of weeks ahead with various signs of the seasons this year, to compare with last (see 29/5/13).
Being 42
Life, one day at a time
Tag Archives: nature
Bumblebee in big trouble
Wednesday 23rd April 2014, 9.35am (day 972)
I know this is an essentially crap photo, with the focus all wrong, but it was a dramatic moment, at least at the micro-scale. I was trying to get a photo of this bumblebee as it buzzed around the plants by our front door, when suddenly it blundered into this web down by our old coal cellar, where the cave spiders live. Now I don’t know about you but if something one and a half times my size — and bumblebees, in insect terms, are not small — came leaping out at me with the intention of making me lunch, I think my life would flash before my eyes even if it was just an insect life. Three seconds later the bumblebee escaped, but I bet those were the longest three seconds it had ever known. I managed to get this one shot of the drama.
Frog spawn
Sunday 16th March 2014, 2.10pm (day 934)
The mill pond upstream from us, from where the flash flood claim on July 9th 2012, has now mostly silted up, but there is still life in it.
Golden Mantellas, Manchester Museum
Sunday 23rd February 2014, 11.30am (day 913)
Had to go into Manchester today. Once the errand was done, Joe and I passed some time in the Manchester Museum, which is on the university campus but which I have managed never to properly explore in the 8 years I have worked there. It’s a good natural history and anthropological museum, in fact. These frogs are native to Madagascar and critically endangered in the wild. They’re toxic, though not extremely so.
Cherry blossom (definitively)
Wednesday 19th February 2014, 11.50am (day 909)
Now I said back in December that I thought I had seen very, very early blossom on the University of Manchester campus, but it turned out to be a winter flowering cherry. However, this, definitively, is traditional, spring cherry blossom in flower on 19th February; they are in the courtyard within my office building on the campus. Well, I said it’d been a very mild winter — unlike in North America where the Great Lakes are almost fully frozen, and very unlike last year here.
The next allotment
Sunday 19th January 2014, 2.50pm (day 878)
Glorious afternoon today, with sunlight streaming onto the allotments in late afternoon. Our neighbours (garden-wise) are much more organised than us. The green netting is evidence of that alone, but look — they have poultry. Why don’t we have poultry?
Rooks taking off
Monday 30th December 2013, 11.00am (day 858)
Birds, again, but hey. So it goes. We could have a New Year challenge, see if your count of the rooks on this photo (in flight or still in the tree) matches mine. For what it’s worth I get it to over 100, and all were circling over Hebden Bridge town centre this morning in a mildly ominous way.
Entwood
Sunday 8th September 2013, 2.40pm (day 745)
Sometimes there are places — like this — that are less than five minutes’ walk from your house, that you walk or drive all around most of the time, yet never actually set foot in from one year to the next. This little wood clings to the side of a very steep hill, the trees grasping on for dear life with these claw-like roots, and the image of them as Ents (the walking trees from Lord of the Rings) was made that little bit more believable by catching flare in the lens as purple light above.
Arachnophobes: don’t scroll down
Saturday 9th June 2012, 11.55am (day 289)
You were warned. But I think this is a beautiful creature; currently living in the shed outside our front door. Rarely have I seen a bigger one, and certainly not in England. I won’t get a better photo today so I’m posting this now. (I haven’t been able to identify the species, not for certain: if anyone can help, leave a comment…)
Postscript: Thanks to Gary, a nice man at UKsafari.com, I’ve been told it’s a Cave Spider: see this page. Species either Meta menardi or Meta bourneti, but it’s impossible to tell which one exactly without capturing it and using a magnifying glass…which I am not going to do.
Being 42 