After a week a very high winds, today was a bit calmer and in fact very sunny here in North Essex, but a little colder. Two projects today. One was to start testing my new camera. After a long time of putting up with one of first digital cameras to come out, I decided to upgrade. After a lot of research I decided to go for this Nikon Coolpix S4 camera. It has all the facilities of a reasonable standard SLR including good optical zoom (x10) and a macro facility whilst still being compact enough to put in a jacket pocket. A few other add-ons i.e. voice recording and movie capability give it the icing on the cake. The unique swivel lens is handy for framing awkward shots. The point and shoot mode is great for… er… pointing and shooting while there are several specialist modes like low light, landscape, high speed shutter, portrait etc etc. I must admit I wasn’t too creative today but just snapped away looking at the different settings. Yet another category appears on this blog! Photography.

My other mission was to try out fire-lighting in the very different conditions to last week. I wanted to see exactly just how much last weeks wet conditions affected normal fire-lighting. I used exactly the same wood for tinder and kindling as I did last week.

For a start it seemed to be easier just preparing the material in today’s conditions. I started with scraping birch bark and preparing some dry-ish wood into small feather sticks. After putting the kindling into a tent shape, I lit the tinder with the fire-steel and knife. Would you believe it, it caught on the second strike and I was able to feed it straight under the kindling where, again it caught well. Soon the fire, albeit a small one, was fully alight. All I had to do was add more moderately dry pieces of wood. What a difference a day or two of no rain makes. I was very surprised how quickly the wood had dried out. Well it was enough to make fire-lighting so much easier at any rate. Now all I have to do is keep practicing in the wet to become more adept at fire-lighting in any conditions.

I was still on the look out for the wood’s new residents; the deer. But I didn’t see them on this short excursion. I did however come across a bit of a gruesome discovery. I’ll post about this mid-week.

Thanks for the visit.

There’s just too much going on at the moment. It’s difficult to keep up with it all. I spent hours in Broaks wood just wandering along slowly trying to take everything in.

Greater Stitchwort.

Speckled wood butterfly. I also saw small cabbage whites, brimstones and orange tips.

The ponds are busy as well.

I think this is a recently hatched small red damselfly

I haven’t seen yellow archangel for a long time.

The show of bluebells never disappoint

They are iconic British woodland flowers

Why not show them off?

Wood avens or Herb Bennet, Wild strawberry, Bugle, Gorse, Herb Robert were all there as well.

Bird life was a little more difficult to see although I did catch a glimpse at a Nuthatch and I even saw a Swallow fly over.

My super-hearing detected a sound of movement in the leaf litter as I was watching the newts in a pond and I just managed to see a dark brown shape of a vole.

I also caught a glimpse of a Muntjac.

I followed the tracks and crotties for a while but lost them in amongst the undergrowth. There were some tiny tracks amongst them undoubtedy this years fawns but I didn’t see any.

Rain is forecast all next week. Who cares when the weekend is like this?

Thanks for the visit.

I went to Lowt’s wood for the first time in eight months. I haven’t been there before now because it’s quite a walk in and most of the wood is accessible only by climbing a steep slope. Having said that, it’s one of my favourite woods. It’s very quiet and despite being unmanaged, it looks nice.

I crept into the wood in case there was some Fallow deer about, but on this occasion there wasn’t. I meandered my way along the lower level and then climbed the steep slope to the higher parts of the wood. I stopped on the west side for a bit of lunch.

It was quiet with only a few birds and the distant mewing of a Buzzard. My lunch was bacon and eggs with beans cooked in the primus frying pan on my Optimus crux stove amongst the seeding heads of the spent Bluebells.

I took the opportunity to sort out my utility bag. I’m now carrying it in a drop bag so I can just put it any one of my rucksacks I take out with me.

After a bit of lunch I went to the south side of the wood and out into the field. The sun had come out and I was immediately attracted to the hedgerow where numerous insects had settled in the blazing heat.

Despite wanting to do a small carving project, I was kept fascinated by the comings and goings of the various insects, dragonfly and butterflies.

I spotted this Painted-lady speeding it’s way across the field and eventually it settled on the hedgerow. These come all the way from Africa. Apparently, they arrived in their thousands in May.

The dragonflies were represented by a single Common blue.

I spotted two types of caterpillar, the peacock butterfly (above) and large white butterfly.

The day ended with the usual snooze amongst the leaf litter back on the lower part of the wood before I headed home.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

I went out today with the specific intention of finding and photographing a fox. I had to ask around.

Have you seen a fox? No, I thought not.

What about you? No I didn’t think so.

What about you? Been waiting a while too, eh?

What was that?

Did he go this way?

Or perhaps it was that way .

I get the distinct impression that someone’s having a laugh at my expense.

I’ve being playing with my new Canon EOS 500D camera all weekend, pretending I know what I’m doing.

I’ve had a SLR camera before in the old days of film, but I haven’t had a DSLR before.

Everyone takes pictures of rusty containers for some reason…do I win a prize? No. I thought not.

…and of course the obligatory sunset and birds picture (Rooks).

This is a tree. I should put some clever F stop and shutter speed info I suppose.

People also take close ups of berries don’t they?

…and the old blurred background thingy.

Watch my ears, watch my ears…

Keep watching…

Just building up enough speed…

There we go!!   The servo mode is quite good.

Okay, we’re bored with trees now. It because they don’t move isn’t it?

Ah yes… Note the way the picture leads you away from the foreground to the background. Still no prize?

Would you please stand still. This is a new bit of kit!! Give us a chance.

Oh well. Back to things that don’t move.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

I’ve set myself a bit of a challenge in the last few weeks. Instead of the normal pictures of spring, I wanted to photograph one species of each category of mammal, bird, amphibian, reptile, wildflower, butterfly in a spring setting, but one of each species that you don’t see too often. I gave myself a deadline of today.

Initially, I thought I had bitten off more than I could chew, but looking back, I’ve actually not done too bad. Unfortunately, the only one I couldn’t ‘collect’ was the reptile. The weather just hasn’t been warm enough for them to sun themselves. It’s still a little too early for dragonflies around this area as well.

I was worried that I would be stuck with the usual picture of a deer for the mammal category until, as luck would have it, we had a visitor to the garden yesterday and I managed to snap this little Bank vole eating some seeds.

The piece de resistance came when I photographed what I thought was a slightly different form of cowslip in Park Woods. When I showed it to our wildflower expert from Essex Wildlife Trust, he identified it as an oxlip. This is now a scarce flower and only found in this area of the East of England. The flowers are bigger and paler than the cowslip and haven’t got the predominant red dots inside the flower. I’ve since identified quite a few patches around the locality.

Erratum: The previously posted picture was of a cowslip which is very similar. The picture above is definitely an oxlip.

I was lucky to photograph this Sawfly lifting off from some Lesser stitchwort and together with the ladybirds, I deemed that to satisfy the criteria for the insect category.

The pendulous sedge isn’t at all scarce but is a good indicator of ancient woodland.

As for the choice of birds, I opted for this newly hatched wren. The nest has been made inside an unused external electrical box. Don’t worry, the electricity is off.

I’ve combined amphibians and pond life. There’s literally thousands of tadpoles in this large puddle.

I saw this Common frog not too far from the puddle. I think it’s still quite young and was very pale.

Not a great picture of a Speckled wood butterfly.

Bill and I have had great fun on this quest. Most of the time he’s come along and seems to have developed a nose for unusual events.

He spotted this young rook that had fallen out of the rookery.

If the rook remains hidden, he may well stay out of the foxes reach until he’s strong enough to fly.

Thanks for the visit.

Here’s some random events that’s happened in the last week either in my garden or very close to it …

Ever seen a white-winged crow? Well, here it is. My mate Dave phoned me up after he caught and ringed it. It’s not injured, just too young to fly. He was last seen attempting a take-off on the local disused runway!

What do you mean – who’s got the bigger beak? This baby rook crash-landed in the garden. He seemed ok until, after this pic was taken, the local pheasant decided to try and stamp on him. Billy chased off the pheasant and despite what looked like a broken leg, the rook managed to become airborne again.

This guy must have escaped from a local farm. Good job I’ve had my Sunday dinner.

Oxeye daisies in my garden.

Field Mouse ear in a nearby meadow

Vetch

Oxeye daisies

Blue tit nesting in the garden.

This rabbit met an untimely end. The puncture marks at the back of the neck are typical of a killing bite of a stoat or weasel. It shows that either or both are in the vicinity. A crow has started on the back end before I disturbed it.

The crops are at an ideal height to remain hidden from fallow deer in the local field.

Talking of fallow deer, don’t forget to buy the latest Bushcraft and Survival Mag. We’re on the cover…

…and inside of course!!

More flowers – cinqfoil [edit: Silverweed - thanks Laplander]

Birds-foot trefoil

Herb bennet or wood avens

Even if you don’t like football, the World Cup is certainly sparking  national fervour. Billy joins in of course, although his ancestors are from the Mediterranean and he comes from Wales.

We probably haven’t got a cat (don’t say it too loud) in hell’s chance of winning – but it’s fun watching the games.

I hope you have a great week.

Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.

We haven’t had a good drop of rain for a while now. The rest of the UK has had a few downpours but we remain pretty dry here in East Anglia.

This led to a few nice sunsets last week as the dust mixed with the rays of the setting sun. I borrowed this 18mm lens. I think I’ll have to invest in one.

I went to Poor Park woods on Sunday. There was a surprising amount of activity and this was mid-morning. I saw three lots of fallow and a fox. The sighting caught me unawares and I didn’t even get a chance to capture them on film apart from this poor photo.

In the afternoon I went foraging for cherries off our local cheery trees, which were delicious.

There is an abundance of grasshoppers around at the moment making great snacks for the birds. A number of butterflies can be seen feeding on thistles, ragwort, and rosebay willowherb (below).

I’ve been taking Billy the Bichon out in the evenings as it’s cooler. It really is a spectacular time of the day once the oppressive heat has dissipated a little.

I’ll leave you with another sunset picture.

Thanks for the visit.