Saturday 23 August 2014

Bees, kingfishers. terrapin and leucistic crows

Today we visited Staffordshire Wildlife Trust Wolseley Centre to pick up more sunflower hearts - stocking up for the Autumn, we also bought our tickets for 'An Audience with John Craven' and we had time to stroll around the grounds too.
The scabious was out in full bloom and when the sun shone it proved a huge attraction for the bees and hoverflies




We then spent an hour or so watching kingfishers - the lens on my camera is great for doing close up of bees on flowers, not so great for photographing a kingfisher on the other side of the river, but I had to try!




these aren't the only kingfishers at the Wolseley, there is also this magnificent kingfisher in the grounds


the resident terrapin also put in an appearance 


and whoever planted this garden, can they come and do mine please!


... and finally hopping around the grounds are blue eyed leucistic crows.


Not to be confused with albinism, leucism is an inherited condition caused by the absence of cells responsible for the production of melanin. You can find out more about leucism and albinism on the BTO website 

Sunday 3 August 2014

Today's dragonflies

Our dog walk today and we had so many dragonflies zigzagging across the lane and some kindly stopped long enough for me to photograph
including this common darter,





this migrant hawker,




and this brown hawker