I enjoyed a browse through my photos taken in 2022 to find my favourites for the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, and while there were not as many as there have been in previous years, there were still lots that reminded me of happy and exciting moments.
Can’t have a review of the year without one of my favourite spring flowers – the Cuckooflower
And the Wood Anemones that I look forward to each year
And my Snake’s Head Fritillary in my garden that keeps coming back each year with more flowers!
And what about the Common Lizards I saw at Cors Caron last year?
Including this particularly green lizard
Also at Cors Caron, this lovely Beautiful Demoiselle
And I can’t look back at 2022 without including our 2 new fur babies we got in May after sadly losing Bob right at the start of the year. This one is Tids (or Tiddlywink)
This one is Tabs (or Tabatha)
Sometimes the wildlife came to me, like this gorgeous Golden-Ringed Dragonfly who dropped into my garden
Also in the garden the Yellow Loosestrife put on a beautiful spread of bright cheerful yellow
There were some firsts this year, like this Marsh Helleborine
And my first ever Cricket!
And this pretty little Antler Moth
Got to include some photos of the amazing birds of prey at the British Birds of Prey Centre too – this one is a Red Kite
And this splendid European Eagle Owl
And finally the piercing stare of the Golden Eagle!
While I don’t agree with all the ‘new year, new you’ pressure, I do find that there is something inviting about a new year, a new page, a new start. It shouldn’t be something that is forced, but it can be helpful to think about this being a fresh new year, as yet untouched, with all it’s possibilities unexplored. A bit like a blanket of fresh snow on a winter’s morning before anyone has made footprints and pawprints in it. Of course, snow melts, and so can the resolve you gather at the beginning of the year, but that’s ok, every day is a new day, sweep aside that slush and meltwater and try again. So in 2023 I’m looking forward with a hopeful slant. I’m sure there will be many things that we’ll struggle with, but there will also be joys, pleasures, and achievments to look forward to.
A few days ago my daughter and I decided to go and visit the National Botanic Garden of Wales, and the British Birds of Prey Centre that’s also there. We were able to watch birds flying over our heads or perching nearby, and it was very exciting! I haven’t used my camera much lately but I was very glad I decided to take it with me. Here are some of my favourite photos …
Sometimes you have to go out looking for interesting creatures, but if you’re lucky, they’ll come to you!
Here are 2 visitors that came to my garden recently. One I’d never seen before, and one who has certainly never visited my garden before! Definitely my favourite finds of recent months.
This one is an Antler Moth, with lovely feathery antennae. Took me ages to work out what he was, but I got there in the end. He seems to be enjoying my Hemp Agrimony flowers.
And this one was very exciting! I was working from home, towards the end of June, and was in the kitchen getting a drink when I glanced out the window and realised I had a Golden-ringed Dragonfly in my garden! She was perched on the Knapweed near my pond. So of course I rushed to get my camera and luckily she was in a posing mood and sat there and let me take many photos! Isn’t she beautiful? 🙂
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is “picking favourites“. The challenge is to pick three of your photos that you consider to be among your very best shots, in different categories. I found this very hard!
I managed to pick 6 photos that caught my eye as I was scrolling through many hundreds of images. So I decided to go with that … just picked 3 favourites twice! 🙂
Category 1: Landscape
I don’t have a lot of landscapes, but there are a few and two of them stood out to me.
Denim Sea
Denim Sea
This was taken back in 2013 at a small town down the coast called Aberaeron. At the time I was experimenting with an HDR effect tool in PhotoShop and this was the result. I find it quite soothing with the calm colours and I like the crisp line at the division of the sky and sea.
Tree Silhouette
Tree silhouette
This one is from 2016, in early spring, while I was on a walk and spotted that there were some trees silhouetted against the bright sky across a field. It’s quite a dramatic, but simple shot.
Category 2: Plants etc.
Dandelion Droplets
Dandelion droplets
This one is from 2015 and stands out because I’ve never got a similar shot since then. It was a damp and misty day, and then the sun came out. Everything was covered in sparkly rain drops and I found this beautiful dandelion seed head, where the droplets were defying gravity and staying put on each individual seed. I love how delicate it is, and how ephemeral. As you’d imagine, I took many photos of this that day, and this is my favourite.
A whole world in a twig
A whole world in a twig
If you’ve been following my blog for a while you might remember this one from a past challenge. Last year, I had been taking photos for a photography/nature course I was doing and had brought this interesting twig indoors to take some photos in a make-shift studio. I really love how the image came out, showing the vibrant colours and variety of textures in the moss and lichen growing on it.
Category 3: Insects
Large Pine Weevil
Large Pine Weevil
Back in 2013 this was one of my first encounters with the wonderful world of weevils! To many they are a pest, but they are weird and wonderful creatures when you look at them carefully, with their amazing trunk like noses. This is one of the bigger weevils (as you can guess by it’s name) but even so, it’s still pretty small. This one was spotted outside my front door sitting on a garden chair (probably made of pine!). I love how you can see the details of the coloured hairs on its body and that the focus is good on the eyes.
Sunshine Dragon
Sunshine dragon
Finally we come to what is still my all-time favourite photo that I’ve probably shared several times before! This was taken back in 2015 at my local village pond. It was a beautiful sunny day and the grass was long. I came upon this lovely female Common Darter dragonfly resting in the grass. At the time I was most concerned with just getting a photo of her, and hadn’t realised how pretty the composition would be. I was focusing on her eyes, with a low depth of field, and the photo turned out to be a dreamy, warm, magical sort of photo. It kind of sums up how I feel about dragonflies – I find them magical, fascinating and special!
This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is ‘Summer Vibes’. This coincides beautifully for me as yesterday, my daughter and I had a lovely and quite exciting walk in nearby sand dunes at Ynyslas. As you can imagine, for me, summer is all about the small things, like insects and flower and I was not disappointed!
I saw some things I’ve never actually seen before, like this flower – the Common Centaury – there were loads of them bringing lovely splashes of pink amid the dunes.
Common Centaury
There were also these tiny pink flowers dotted about which I think are Common Restharrow.
Common Restharrow
One of the reasons we were going to the dunes was because my daughter went on a university field trip there a while back and the lecturers mentioned that in July/August there would be orchids to see. It is on a part of the sand dunes I hadn’t actually investigated before so I hadn’t seen them.
I was excited to see what we could find, and was very happy to find lots and lots of beautiful Marsh Helleborines (another flower I’ve not seen before). From a distance we weren’t sure if they were the orchids we were looking for but as we got closer (and closer) we could see all their lovely little details. Such pretty little flowers!
Marsh Helleborine (Epipactis palustris)
Getting a little closer
Each flower is quite complex
With a lovely frilled edge
So delicate!
It wasn’t just me and my daughter enjoying them, there were plenty of insects too, like this Soldier Beetle.
Soldier beetle on Marsh Helleborine
There were lots of butterflies around on the dunes too. Mostly Gatekeepers and Meadow Browns as well as tiny Skippers that you could easily mistake for a moth.
Gatekeeper
Meadow Brown
Small Skipper
We heard a lot of chirping from the Grasshoppers (a sound that really says ‘summer’ to me), and managed to spot one or two.
Grasshopper
Grasshopper
As we were talking about the grasshoppers I said “I’ve still never seen a cricket, I wish I could see one”… and then I saw movement! It hopped like a grasshopper but I spotted its long antennae, and yes, it was a cricket!! Not sure how I’ve made it nearly to 50 without seeing a cricket before, but yesterday it was my first time. It’s not the best photo, with it facing away from me, but I was glad to grab a picture of it before it hopped away.
Cricket
There was another exciting moment in the dunes when my daughter saw an Adder! It was right behind my foot as I walked by some long grass! It was a very exciting thing to see, although somewhat alarming as if I had stepped on it, it might well have bitten me! Sadly it disappeared into the grass so I didn’t see it myself.
As we emerged from the dunes towards the beach, we had a lovely 360 view which I captured on my phone as I had my macro lens on the camera
And then onto the beach. The tide was far out but there were many beach pools where I enjoyed the reflections and shadows in the gently rippling water.
There were tiny little fish swimming in the pools
And teeny tiny prawns if you looked really closely! They are amazingly well camouflaged, looking exactly like sand, and very hard to get a good shot of!
We even saw this large flatfish, just chilling in the pools waiting for the tide to come back in!
Flatfish burying itself in the sand
And a jellyfish too…
Jellyfish
And as we strolled along the sand we saw in the distance a load of sea birds following a fishing boat. You might need to click on this one to see it bigger on Flickr.
Sea birds following a fishing boat
All in all a beautiful visit to Ynyslas. By the end of our walk we were hot, sweaty, in pain and tired out, but it was worth it 🙂 We are very lucky to have such beautiful places on our doorstep.
Out in the garden the other day, there were a lot of droplets, like these ones on the Crocosmia flower buds. If you look closely you can see refracted upside-down images of my house in there!
If you look carefully you can see reflections of my house
A little closer, it’s easier to see my kitchen window!
I love photographing droplets as they’re so delicate, pretty and ephemeral. On the same day as the photos above, I enjoyed capturing the raindrops on the Alchemilla too. On most of these you can see the Alchemilla itself or the rest of the garden refracted in the droplets
And then, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go further off-piste!
When I saw the ‘Seeing Double’ theme I thought of this female Azure Damselfly I photographed last month. There is a double in terms of the fact that she is mating with another damsel, but then she is the one seeing double as another male attempts to join them!
Mating pair on the right with approaching male on the left
2nd male is a bit confused!
And finally I thought I’d share this image from last weekend which I am really fond of. It’s one of my many Yellow Loosestrife in the garden, and I managed to get the two main open flowers in focus with a lovely blur of yellow from all the other flowers behind them. I love how dream it came out! Hopefully you’ll allow me this as there are many doubles here – double flowers in focus, and doubles upon doubles of this in the blurry yellow background!
If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll be familiar with Bob our elderly cat. Sadly despite being a tough old boy, dealing with his many health issues, it finally became too much in January this year. We had to say goodbye to him, which was awful, and many many tears were shed.
Our home felt so empty without him, so when we felt ready, we decided to adopt a new cat or two!
A few weeks ago we welcomed a new pair of cats into our home – Tabatha and Tiddlywink. Of course they will never replace our beloved Lord Bob, and his quirky, affectionate character, but they have brought smiles and laughter back to our household. They have very different characters and it’s been lovely to get to know them as they get to know us.
There are lots of flowers blooming and if you look carefully, lots of bugs and insects around. I also saw a frog but he hopped off before I could take a photo!
Ragged Robin
Leaf Beetle (Chrysolina polita)
Dung fly (quite cute and fluffy despite its unfortunate name!)
14-spot ladybird
Teeny tiny Mirid bug
Thistle Tortoise beetle
Thick-legged Flower beetle (female, not so thick-legged as the male)
Wow, it has been ages since I last blogged! I took a few pictures today for the first time in a while and thought I’d share them here. So here’s a little taste of spring…
Primrose
Willow catkin
Snake’s Head Fritillary
Snake’s Head Fritillary
Snake’s Head Fritillary bud (looks like there will be a total of 8 flowers this year!)
Snake’s Head Fritillary bud (looks like there will be a total of 8 flowers this year!)
Probably the weirdest small creatures I like to photograph are Weevils. They have a bad name to some as they can be pests, damaging crops, but for me they are just cute little creatures. They look different from ‘normal’ beetles and the main thing is their long snout (called a rostrum). Some are longer than others but they all look a bit weird (and wonderful)! They seem to me like teeny tiny elephants!
Here are the weevils I’ve encountered so far:
I think this one is a Nettle Weevil
Vine Weevil
Hazel Leaf Roller
Don’t seem to have a common name for this one, just Latin: Weevil Liophloeus tessulatus
Clay-Coloured Weevil
Not sure what Weevil this was, but it’s very shiny!
Dock Weevil
Euophryum confine
This one is the Large Pine Weevil. The biggest and most impressive Weevil to date!
And this is one of the smallest, the adorable little Figwort Weevil
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