Category: Wildlife

The Power of Yellow

Goodness, we all need some brightness in our lives just now. The unremitting bad news every time we turn on a news bulletin. The fiasco calling itself the British government. And if all that’s not bad enough, the clocks turn back at the end of the month, leaving us plunged into the darkness of winter.

Leya’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #221 this week gives us an opportunity. Ann-Christine asks us to showcase our favourite flowers. Well, that’s a bit of a task. But what I do know is that a yellow flowers always brings me cheer. The earliest aconites. The first bright-faced daffodils poking through the ground at the beginning of spring. Primroses. Celandines. Even dandelions and fields of rape. Vivid gorse bushes pointing our way on a country or seaside walk. Or – and this is where we’ll begin, summer sunflowers. They always bring a smile to my face as they gradually turn their faces throughout the day to face the rays of the sun. Bees constantly scramble over the heads crammed with seed that will feed the birds – and us – over winter.

Even their hangdog look as they droop and die is characterful.

For the rest, I’ll just give you a small gallery of some of the yellow flowers that bring me cheer year after year, in public places, in gardens, in farmers’ fields and in city streets.

Butterflies III: Half an Hour of My Life revisited

It’s time for Flashback Friday again, and as butterflies have so far been in fairly short supply this year, I thought I’d return to a happy moment in France, in August 2013, when we had friends from England to stay …

Butterflies III: Half an Hour of My Life

There we were at Roquefixade, showing our favourite walking destination off to two of our Harrogate friends, when a butterfly discovered me.  Then another.  These two creatures played round my wrist for more than half an hour before finally dancing off into the sunshine.  They made our day.

I’m thinking they’re the Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus).  Any dissenters?

And if you’re wondering why this post is called Butterflies III, here’s why …

In the same month, I wrote about a Butterfly Bonanza, and at the end of July, about the rare Mountain Apollo

For Fandango’s Flashback Friday

Monday Portrait meets Post from the Past

With what joy we greeted the lizards we encountered on our recent Balkan Journey! How we miss the companions who shared our daily life in France, during the summer months, at least.

Here‘s what I wrote about them, ten whole years ago:

Summer’s arrived: well, this week anyway.  So from before breakfast until long after the evening meal we’re spending as much time as we can out in the garden.  And we have plenty of company.  Lizards.  Common wall lizards, podarcis muralis.  They are indeed spectacularly common here.  We have no idea exactly where they live, but there are plenty who call our garden ‘home’.  We’re beginning to get to know a few.

Easily the most identifiable is Ms. Forktail, she of the two tails.  She’s the only one we’ve been able to sex conclusively as well, because we caught her ‘in flagrante’ with Mr. Big behind the gas bottles recently.  And then the next day she was making eyes at a younger, lither specimen, and the day after that it was someone else.  She’s lowering the moral tone of our back yard.

Then there’s Longstump, who’s lost a tiny portion of tail, and Mr. Stumpy, who hasn’t got one at all, though it seems not to bother him.  Redthroat has a patch of crimson under her chin.  There are several youngsters who zip around with enthusiasm and incredible speed.

Longstump

In fact they all divide their time between sitting motionless for many minutes on end, and suddenly accelerating, at top speed and usually for no apparent reason, from one end of the garden to the other, or vertically up the wall that supports our young wisteria. On hot days like this  (36 degrees and counting) they’ll seem to be waving at us.  Really they’re just cooling a foot, sizzled on the hot wood or concrete.  Sometimes you’ll see them chomping their way through some insect they’ve hunted, but often they’ll step carelessly and without interest over an ant or other miniature creepy-crawly in their path.

‘Our’ lizards on their personal sun-loungers

Mainly they ignore one another, but sometimes there are tussles.  These may end with an uneasy standoff, or with the two concerned knotted briefly together in what could scarcely be described as an act of love.

Happy hour for Longstump

We could spend hours watching them, and sometimes we do.  But there is still a bathroom to build, a workroom to fit out, and a pergola to design.  The kings and queens of the yard have no such worries.  They can do anything: they choose not to.

A Pride of Peacocks

These peacocks live in North Macedonia, where they have, uninvited but none the less welcome, taken up residence at the hotel we stayed at on the shores of Lake Ohrid, St. Naum. I think they can speak for themselves – as they did, very noisily, every morning.

The rear view proved just as interesting as that draped tail.

… for a few moments – at rest.

And now … a peacock in action. Not for nothing is one of its collective nouns an Ostentation of Peacocks.

I’ll be honest. I conceived and wrote this post as a Monday Portrait. But then Tina’s Lens-Artists Challenge dropped into my in-box: ‘The eyes have it’. I’m not entirely sure she had peacocks in mind, but the hundreds of ‘eyes’ that make up the peacock’s tail, and that slightly penetrating gaze displayed in that head shot allowed me to think I might get away with including this post in the challenge.

Am I too late … ?

I wanted to be in the Monday Portrait from Prespa, but the birds got there first. Am I too late? It’s not Monday? Well, I’m here now …

Look, I got here as soon as I could … And now I’m here, you might wait till I’m properly in shot.

… I’ve had to overcome all kinds of difficulties …

But here I am, ready for my profile to be shown to best advantage.

And by the way: that feature photo. Those gnarled old olive stumps are quite my favourite spot.

Balkan Postcards 8: Breakfast Time for the Great White Egret

After my own breakfast, I had just half an hour to spare to watch this great white egret hunt for his. While I was there, he caught just two small fish. The nearby hens were busy too, as you can hear.

Our Prespa adventure is over now: our Balkan adventure is not. To be continued …