New camera in the woods - bluebells and butterflies

Sorry for the lack of posts - I've been getting to grips with my new camera, a Nikon D5300, and also some new software to process the photos, Adobe Lightroom. Anyway, I'm back now, and here's a selection of photos from the woods...

May is always a good month for butterflies, and now I can capture images of them in even higher resolutions! :-) Here's a Peacock sunning itself:

and also a female Orange Tip, which confusingly does not have orange-tipped wings like the male does...

The Brimstone butterflies are out too, and this one actually sat still for me:

Bees are out too - I think this one is a 'Large Red-tailed Humble Bee', but not too sure on that:

and I've no idea what this one is, as I've not got its whole body visible:

Dragonflies are beginning to appear as well:

But the birds are harder to photograph now, with the leaves hiding them, as with this Great Tit:

As well as the usual photos, I've also been trying some of the special features in my new camera. One of them is selective colouring, where you can pick up to three colours to include, with various parameters, leaving the rest of the picture in greyscale. For example, Bluebells with only the blue showing:

And again, but with blue and green this time:

It worked nicely on this daisy:

and also this Lesser Celandine (?):

I also tried a few using HDR (High Dynamic Range) plus a 'sketch' effect:

Plenty more to come in due course...

Mike

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The birds and a bee

I know we're still a bit short of bees, so when I found this one half-dead on our conservatory floor, I took it out into the sun and gave it some sugar:

According to this site, it's a Large Earth Humble Bee, or Bombus Terrestris.

After feeding, it preened itself and flew off - job done!

We went down to Rye Harbour Nature Reserve over the weekend to take a few photos from the bird hides there.

We saw a Great White Egret:

Some Curlew:

A female Wheatear - thanks for the comment that ID'd this for me, the RSPB bird ID website was showing the male one first, which looks quite different.

And finally, some cute ducklings (I think - no sign of the parent), who started off on their little island:

Gradually made their way down to the water:

Swam round the island:

And then came out again on the other side:

They did this several times, but didn't dare move to another island!

Mike

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The birds and the bees

Yes, literally. Let's start with the birds:

We saw this Great Tit hanging around a Cherry tree we'd left during last winter's coppicing:

It was only after taking the photo and zooming in we saw the caterpillar in its mouth, so then we waited to see where the nest was. It's amazing how small a space they appear to need:

Anyway, onto the bees. The foxgloves are now in flower, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to photograph the bees feeding there. The trick is to watch the bee go into a flower, and during the few seconds it spends in there you get into position and get focus lock, fully depressing the shutter release just as the bee appears. It works best with flash, even in full daylight:

though without flash you get a nice motion blur on the wings:

There's loads of other insect life around enjoying the warm weather, such as this damselfly

Not surprising really, when you see what a jungle the top of Sweep Wood has become. We might need to go along with a scythe soon and clear the path!

Lower down the hill, where we cut the coppice recently, the bluebells have now faded and are being replaced by goosegrass, or 'sticky grass' as I used to call it when I was younger:

Finally, here's a few photos from the bottom of Sweep Wood, showing it not long after we finished cutting, then when the bluebells were out, and then yesterday:

Mike

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