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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Springtime in the woods - flowers and butterflies

We took advantage of the sunshine yesterday to go for lunch in the woods with my parents, who were visiting for the day. Although I saw solitary Bluebells a couple of weeks ago, there's a liberal scattering now visible!

The Wood Anemones are also looking good, now at the height of their flowering:

Between them and the Bluebells, the woodland is completely green now!

In the wayleave there are also Violets in flower, to the delight of various insects:

There's a good number of Primroses too - these were near the roadside:

Also scattered amongst the Wood Anemones over in Sweep Wood are Lesser Celandine and an occasional Daffodil:

The butterflies are also out in force now, here's a Small Tortoiseshell:

a Comma:

and a Peacock:

The birds are busy too - we saw some scouting out nesting sites, and the pheasants are strutting around making a lot of noise as usual for the time of year:

The trees all come into leaf at different times - Oak is still some way off, but Hornbeam is coming out now:

Hawthorn is well on the way:

Hazel is just starting:

and in the warmer spots in Sweep Wood there are even some Sweet Chestnut leaves appearing, but in most parts of the woods they are not started yet:

Here's a view of an area we coppiced in 2010/11, with ground cover growing like crazy:

And here's the area we cut in autumn 2013 - we spotted a few butterflies making the best of the new sunlight in this area already!

Finally, Tracy had her class visit the woods this week, so their dens/shelters are now in a better state of repair:

One group even got as far as making some miniature clay pots for the den's 'kitchen'!

We're looking forward to some more sunny days so we can spend time in the woods, now the wet weather has passed...

Mike

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Butterflies at last!

The wet summer has not been great for the UK's butterflies, so it was pleasing to see so many this afternoon, especially as we had friends who'd been helped in coppicing in Sweep Wood visiting to see the wildlife benefits of their work! Some of them lived nearby, others were from Rother Guardians.

Here's one of the old favourites, a Peacock:

The Buddleja it's settled on has self-seeded at the top of Sweep Wood - we have quite a few garden escapees up there, and while I wouldn't have planted this one in a woodland, as it's arrived by itself I'm quite happy to leave it - and the butterflies are delighted I'm sure!

Just as a reminder, Sweep Wood used to look like this:

Then we got busy coppicing and it looked like this:

And just a year or two later it looks like this:

The hill in Sweep wood had lots of other butterflies present, especially Meadow Browns and Gatekeepers:

There were also various White butterflies, but I didn't get photos of them. Lots of dragonflies too - remember none of these insects were to be seen here before we did the coppicing:

Heading further into the woods we saw several Speckled Wood butterflies:

White Admirals:

and a beetle too...

In the wayleave were Comma butterflies and more dragonflies; I got a rare opportunity to photograph two together:

We also saw this wasp feeding on Common Figwort - apparently they're a good pollinator for them:

Great to see all of these creatures around again!

Mike

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