After spotting a Cinnabar Moth a couple of weeks ago I started looking for the tell tale signs of the yearly invasion and today I found the first signs of the annual ragwort decimation by these tiny Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae) caterpillars. They were only about 1cm long but they were everywhere I looked, marching over their chosen battleground, leaving no Ragwort plant standing.
Were they in Queens Park where I’d seen the adult and been looking all week? Were they hell… this morning I parked the car and not 3 feet from the door was a mass of tiny yellow and black warriors.Looking back at last year I think they’re a bit behind but who can blame them – it was a bit of a chilly start to the year…
Luckily I had the ‘baby’ camera with me, the Canon Powershot A640 so I was able to get a relatively good close-up although the breeze made it a bit tricky. The more I use the A640 the more I like it even though I’ve had it for ages. Sometimes I get fixated in thinking that the EOS 450D with all it’s lenses and gizmos is always better and most of the time it is but I can put the Powershot in my pocket, it takes good pictures and it’s macro facility is astounding so from now on when I go out deliberately to take a few photographs I’m going to take them both.
Spotted a Comma butterfly newly hatched and hanging of it’s old crysalis yesterday but didn’t have a camera with me but I’ve got my eye on another pupae which hopefully should ‘hatch’ soon – it would be good to grab a shot of the butterfly emerging but the weather is a bit touch and go in the North West at the moment and catching it at that stage will need a fair bit of luck.
Sea Fishing… it brings out the nutter in some people and last weekend I joined the crazy crew as a few of us arrived at the mark known as The Rock Channel at New Brighton on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside at 4:15am. Yes, you read that correctly just past 4 in the morning, I’d left the house at 3am arriving to meet a few of the guys from the Wirral Sea Fishing forum after driving South through an eerily quiet [... read rest of post]
Today was one of those days where everything was great. It started off by waking up to another fantastic morning – beautiful blue skies with the sun high in the sky even though it was 8am, a slight breeze to take the edge of the heat and a garden full of vegetables that we’d planted (our first attempt and peas are almost ready!!!) I’d arranged to go and visit my parents for a couple of reasons; one – it was [... read rest of post]
Following on from my previous attempts at photographing beetles around Queens Park in Bolton I spotted some small dark metallic blue ones, very similar to the Green Dock Beetles I’d photographed a few weeks ago. I only had the ‘small’ camera, Canon Powershot A640, with me but as it turned out this was far more capable of close ups than my EOS 450D although the fact the beetles were hardly moving and I could get about 2cm away from them [... read rest of post]
It’s that time of year when normally sane (if there is such a thing) sea anglers treck miles out onto a sandbar at New Brighton called The Rock Channel in the yearly pilgrimage to catch a Smooth hound. I had a go last year as you can see here with not much success but this time I’d at least heard of a few coming out the previous week. As I was driving through Liverpool the weather changed dramatically for the [... read rest of post]
I know I go through all sorts of clothing and footwear in my sea fishing and walking adventures and although I like browsing through all the outdoor gear shops it’s a pain sometimes as I live in a village a fair distance from any major retailer. Well this month that all changed as just up the road from where I live a shop has opened called trek outdoors which aims to offer a range of quality technical and casual brands, [... read rest of post]
I know when I was a kid, many, many years ago that even though we lived in rural Lancashire there was nothing quiet so fantastic as the summer holidays. Just being outside, in the ‘wild’ as we thought of it then, and then the summer holidays spent in North Wales by the sea. Undoubtedly my interest in all things outdoors stem from those times. How fantastic would it be for an inner city kid to experience the same things I [... read rest of post]
If there’s one thing we know how to do well in this country it’s the nature documentary – hasn’t BBC Springwatch been great and we’re only into week one. Needless to say, with the beautiful weather we’ve been having and being a bit inspired by Springwatch I ventured out to Queens Park in Bolton during my lunch hour to see what mini beasts I could snap. There were tiny metallic green beetles on all the Dock along the edge of [... read rest of post]
I’ve not been sea fishing for a while, or any other type of fishing for that matter. Not for any specific reason just other stuff to do around the house and garden while the weather is good. But with the weather being so good this past weekend I couldn’t resist a walk along our local river, The River Douglas, to see what was going on. The river itself was quite quiet with the usual suspects bobbing along in the wakes [... read rest of post]
Anglesey is a fantastic place for any nature lover, in fact anyone who just likes being outside so while we weren’t fishing or just lazing about we did manage to go for the odd walk, more of a stroll really – didn’t want to tax ourselves after all… You can tell spring is finally here though as a lot of our avian friends that spend the winter months somewhere a bit warmer are finally arriving. Walking around the inland sea [... read rest of post]
