Well, things have been busy over the last few days. i have been out on the Somerset levels again looking for just about anything! I saw my first ever wild grass snake and it swam across a small pool of water, the spiders were out in force and were the ants and ticks, but thankfully all the ticks remained on the vegetation and not on me! I also saw my first damselfly of the year, what a character it was too, and features in the first photo for this post almost looks like it's waving!
I finally managed to capture on film the mating dance of the wolf spider, it is a mesmerizing display, make sure you watch both spiders carefully, the male is on the left the femal on the right.
Spider Mating Dance
Some news from the garden to finish off with, there have been some visitors to the garden over the last couple of days in the form of four mallard ducks, one female and three males. They definately seem to have made themselves comfy, resting in the grass, washing and feeding in the pond. Just yesterday I found an egg on the lawn, thankfully the female came back for it and now just keeping fingers crossed that they will have a family. I will keep you posted, but for now the second photo for today is of one of the males having a wash.
It truely has been a beautiful couple of days in terms of the weather and it seems the insects and spiders are in agreement. I decided to get up early this morning and head to Westhay on the Somerset Levels to try to photograpgh some bugs, something I have become very addicted to over the last few weeks. I definately wasn't disappointed, arriving at 8am the dew was in perfect droplets everywhere and the early sunlight reflected of them beautifully. I had a really productive day behind the camera which included filming the male wolf spider performing his mating dance for a female, who it would seem was less than impressed! I also captured this image of a spider in amongst dew drops in the sunlight, I hope you like it. Videos to following shortly, off again early tomorrow morning.
It really is amazing what you can come across in your own garden, I've been re-arranging some fruit bushes and found this little fella wondering around unaware at the time how important a find it might actually be! It turns out this little fella is actually a violet oil beetle, a species that is considered vulnerable in the UK and one on which a survey is being run by buglife ( I will be submitting the fining to them). So here it is:
I've been spending quite a bit of time recently concentrating on wildlife in the garden and in particular a group of wolf spiders on an old railway sleeper that come out to bath in the warm sunlight. I have been trying some different things including the use of monchrome and using different points of focus. Below is one of the more creative shots, I hope you like it!
