First Privet Hawk-moth of the year, Sphinx ligustri, in our garden last night. The largest of the British moths, can be up to 120mm wingspan.
Some years I've seen several on the same evening along with a variety of the other Hawk-moths. But, 2024 is not proving a very good year for any of the moths here, so far :-(
Great Reed Warbler still putting on a show at RSPB Ouse Fen (Earith). Sad that he is very, very unlikely to get a response to his almost constant, loud mating call here though #vagrantSpecies from Europe.
Cell 8, second mound along from the car park...look out for the half a dozen people in green/khaki with scopes, bins, and cameras. The GRW is very loud, you won't miss him.
The Buff-tip moth has evolved to resemble a snapped off Silver Birch twig and so the moth, on finding a stick, will embrace it and stay very still in the hope that nobody notices it... #teamMoth#mothsMatter
We were camping near The Thames last weekend. Got up in the middle of the night to see radiant bands of light across the sky. Next morning, we learned the Aurora Borealis had been spectactular across the country. This must have been part of it, although we saw none of the curtains of skyborne colours due to ionised gases in the atmosphere.
I did take a photo of the crescent moon the next night while anticipating a second coming that was never to be.
You're a bird, flying in looking for tasty morsels in the shrubbery. Ooh, what's that, something fluttered by and landed? You investigate...sheeeyit there's a sharp-eyed mammal staring back at you!
If you're wondering why I've posted the moth upside down...think about what angle a bird might first catch a glimpse, it's not necessarily the right way up! If agitated this species will expose a second pair of eyes on its hindwings
The details and the subtlety of the "eyes", formally known as ocelli, are quite astonishing when you think about it. They have "irises" and "catchlights" to make them look like real eyes and from this angle eyebrows and a nose below!!!
There are lots of Sedge Warbler around our local nature reserves - RSPB Berry Fen, Ouse Fen, Fen Drayton etc
Noisy blighrers with a seemingly random, almost scratchy song, they like to perch up on bushes, take to the air briefly and cascade back down into the bush. If they're not doing that, they may well be hidden among the reeds in a reed bed
The Hobbies are back from the African wintering grounds. This one was way up high so a very cropped photo.
The Hobby is a falcon that sits between the Peregrine and the Kestrel in size and is very similar to each in some ways. I've photographed them taking and eating dragonflies on the wing, but have also witnessed them taking Swift.
Falco subbuteo, which means a falcon "less than", so smaller, than a buzzard (Common Buzzard is Buteo buteo).
I say this every year, but the subbuteo bit is where the table footie game gets its name. The inventor wanted to call it "Hobby", but the manufacturers would have none of it, so he sneakily called it Hobby anyway, by using the species component of the bird's scientific binomial.
Numerous Green Longhorn, Adela reaumurella, out again when it was sunny for a second or two on Thursday, I'd seen half a dozen in a different part of the wood the day before.
Those "wires" are the males' antennae, which are about three times as long as his wings.
I used 1/8000s shutter speed, which was about as long as the sun shone
Artwork uses a photo I took of a Gypsy Moth, now known as The Spongy Moth in the US. The flames were from a barbecue on a family holiday in Turkey many years ago, hahaha
Perhaps the archetypal LBJ - Garden Warbler, Sylvia borin. One of numerous singing on our local nature reserve yesterday alongside various other warbler species