The soldier beetle can often be seen on the flowering heads of wild herbs and flowers.These photos were taken in the spring. The flower heads were cut from the plants growing wild on the smallholding and taken indoors to be photographed. The original intention was just to photograph the incredible beauty of the flowers, but these had a lot of insect activity, mostly from the soldier beetle.In these first two photographs, the plant was a wild Angelica. It had two beetles on it. It was only while I was taking the photographs that I realised that they appeared to be mating - not something you see every day!This third photograph is from a different set. This time the beetles were on hogweed. This shows a single individual in quite extreme close up - you can see that it is covered in...
This time last year (it has taken me this long to get around to sorting through these photos) I was driving along the quiet country lane that lead to my smallholding in Wales. I had noticed this bright yellow caterpillar walking across the road. I dashed indoors to grab my camera - I had no time to collect the tripod but grabbed the 100mm macro lens and rushed down the lane to photograph it before it disappeared.The bristles on this caterpillar were an amazing bright lemon yellow. The body segments was a bright, almost fluorescent, 'unripe lemon green'. The body between the segments was the deepest black I have ever seen. The whole effect was magnificent - I have never seen a combination of colours like it. I hope you have a good monitor so that you can appreciate the subtlety of the...
This week, unusually, I am featuring two sets of photographs in the one blog. The first is of a small orange beetle, commonly known in the UK as a Soldier Beetle. The second is a set of photographs of the 'Red Arrows' display team at Lowestoft Airshow which I took a few weeks ago.The Soldier Beetle:The first photograph shown above, is a close up of the soldier beetle. Is is feeding on the flowers of a hogweed - a wild flower of the hedgerows and verges. This, as with many of my close-up photographs, is taken in my home-made studio of a cardboard box with a black card background. I like this because of the detail in the photograph, not just the insect. You can see the individual flowers of the hogweed that make up the complete flower head and the pollen on the head of the beetle.This...
Yellow-rattle (Rhinanthus minor) is a plant that has been in plentiful supply in some of our meadows this summer. Apparently, it is semi parasitic on grass that inhibits its growth - this stops the grass from becoming too dominant. It is strange that it is common on some fields but absent on others only a hundred yards or so away.The image at the top is part of the flower head and shows an individual bloom. You can see where the 'yellow' in the common name comes from. The green bulbous part below the flower is what ripens to hold the seeds This rattles when dry which gives the plant its common name.The picture below shows a ripened 'rattle' - you can just make out the seeds inside (the dark bits).The third photograph shows the top part of a flower stem that carries several individual...
A few days ago I noticed a clump of small white flowers growing by one of our compost heaps. Looking closely at it I thought the colours were quite delicate and worth recording. As it was late afternoon I managed to get some photos of the plants as they were growing and the following day I took a cutting indoors to take a selection of photographs of the whole plant and the flowers in a 'studio' setting.Looking at my reference books and field guide my best guess is that it may be a 'common mouse-ear' but the leaves are not as hairy as the field guides suggest. The anthers are a pale blue whereas other specimens are yellow. I would be grateful if anyone can positively identify it.Shown here are some of the results - more can be seen in the wildflower section of the environment gallery.The...
I am slowly building up my gallery of photographs of wild flowers. In doing this I find that I am looking closer at the plants than I would do normally. This shows that there is beauty even in common weeds that would usually be pulled up and discarded.The picture above shows the flower of the common hemp nettle (Galeopsis tetrahit). The flower is only about 1/4" across (5-6mm) and is one of a cluster growing at the tip of a stem. It looks quite inconspicuous at normal viewing distances, but is quite an attractive flower close-up. This picture is an enlargement from another photo taken close up - even my macro lens doesn't quite get close enough at times.This second photograph shows the flower from the side. You can see it is quite a long, trumpet shaped flower. I have not discovered...
Whilst doing some clearing up around the smallholding this week, I discovered this small group of fungi growing out of the top of an old tree stump. Although I know that some kinds of fungi grow all year round, or at different times of the year, I was surprised to see this clump growing in late spring.As they were in a shaded 'wildlife' area, amongst some low trees and shrubs (and loads of brambles), the light levels were quite low, so that I needed to use a tripod to hold the camera steady. The sun was quite bright so I used a diffuser to spread the light on some photographs, on others I kept the dappled light.The top picture shows the fungus group in its entirety on the tree stump. You will notice that there is ivy growing through the fungus - I don't know what came first, the ivy or...
During the spring, many of the (few) cacti that I have burst into life by showing some amazing flowers. Often the difficulty is catching them when they are open - some last only a day or so. I check the progress of the buds most mornings (I keep the plants in a polytunnel) but even so, some have flowered and gone within a day, hence I miss their beauty.The picture above is of a flower, one of two, that one cactus develops every year. The photograph is this week's 'Photograph of the week'. The plant came from my late father-in-law when he became too old to bother with them (if anyone can identify the cactus I would be pleased to hear from them). These flowers are about 3 inches across at the end of a long trumpet-like stem about 6 or 8 inches long.The colour is a most delicate pale pink,...
