G

Ken D

@gazingattrees.bsky.social

140 Followers 124 Following

Pointing a camera at birds and beasties in and around Edinburgh. Photos by me, except reposts. Walk softly and carry a big lens.

A weasel atop a red plastic ballast block supporting a temporary metal fence. The weasel is looking down, although I suspect that the reason for the climb was a magpie sitting above.
A lucky shot where the front of a moth in flight is in focus while nothing else is. Not a typical moth, they're big, with chunky, grey, furry bodies and orange wings that beat very fast. They remain in flight while feeding and have a long proboscis for this.
A small tortoiseshell butterfly on the small, slightly ragged-looking maiden pink flower.
A backlit small copper, a small orange butterfly with black spots on its wings. It's sitting on a tall buttercup-like yellow flower surrounded by out-of-focus pink flowers. I should have used an app to identify the flowers - I'll revisit soon and find out.
A small green butterfly with a dashed white line across its wings. It is photographed in profile sitting on blaeberry (aka bilberry), where it is well camoflaged. They can sometimes be spotted on gorse bushes too.
The head and neck of a roe deer obscured by a bush. But most of the frame is filled with an out-of-focus classic red telephone box. I did get clearer shots of the deer but was very happy to get this background.
A dark-edged bee-fly on a holly leaf. It's a fly, but its furry body mimics a bee. The front edge of the wing has a dark pattern, giving its common name.
A comma, a predominantly orange butterfly, in the foreground and a peacock (mostly red with eye patterns on its wings) out-of-focus behind it. Both are inverted and feeding on the small blue flowers of grape hyacinth.
A buff-tailed bumblebee with a small green circle with white "64" on its back between the wings. The numbers allow individual bees to be identified. The students studying the bees took audio recordings and physicial measurements of the bees before tagging and ideally would repeat the exercise with a previously tagged bee days or weeks later.
A hairy-footed flower bee feeding on a small pinky-purple pulmonaria flower. The ginger hairs on the bee indicate that it is a male. The males emerge before the black-haired females. Long, fine hairs are just visible on the middle leg. These hairs give the bee its common and scientific names, plumipes translates to "feather foot".
A queen bumblebee on a small pink flower of Rhododendron dauricum.
A redpoll in an alder tree, pausing from taking tiny seeds from the cones.
Two waxwings from a group of four that I watched yesterday and today. They're eating white rowan(?) berries in the trees they visited most often. They also visited a tree with red rowan(?) berries nearby.
A waxwing eating a white rowan(?) berry.
A common gull sitting on top of a lamppost. The lamppost is not straight, that's the lamppost rather than dodgy camera work (sometimes it's the latter). The background is the spire of Barclay Viewforth Church.
A northern brown argus (a small butterfly) sitting on a non-flowering head of knapweed on the left of the image with two out-of-focus flowering knapweed heads on the right.
A wool-carder bee visiting a purple and yellow flower, I think annual toadflax (Linaria maroccana). There's a lovely patch of these by the big pond.
A white-letter hairstreak on the small yellow flowers of lady's bedstraw. The white "W" that gives its name is visible here (but not the clearest example). It also gives the scientific name Satyrium w-album.
A small skipper, a diminutive orange butterfly, sitting on the lavender-blue flowers of catmint (Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant').
A four spotted-chaser resting on the tip of a long grass stem. The marks on the wing that give its name are visible, most dragonflies have similar outer marks but not the middle ones (pterostigma). The background is pale green with patches of pink. This is provided by purple loosestrife that is growing around the edge on the main pond.
A cuckoo sitting on a low branch of a tree just above long grass. I assume it was finding food in the grass because it would go into the grass for a few seconds and then back up into the tree.
A shrew in grass with a fat caterpillar in its mouth. The shrew is a small rodent with short brown hair, small ears and a pointed snout. The body of the caterpillar is pale pink with small black spots. It has a pale head with maroon "eyes" (ocelli).
The Nelson Monument, clad with scaffolding and with security fences around it, and a crane in the foreground with a fully extended jib with a large black ball hanging from it above the top of the Monument. A man wearing hi-vis clothing looks very small atop the scaffolding.
A small, fluffy, yellow gosling sitting in short grass. The geese, including the goslings, graze this patch of grass. I remained a respectful distance away, used a long lens and cropped the image.
A male large skipper on red valerian.
A cinnabar moth resting on the underside of a garlic mustard leaf. Its wings are folded, the visible wing is black with a long red stripe and two red dots.
A very young moorhen looking towards the camera. Its beak is red with a yellow tip. Its down is black with some long grey wisps at its neck giving the impression of a beard. The down on the top of its head is thin with skin showing. A wing is visible, but it is barely a stump. Its legs are not visible (obscured by vegetation) - those are well-formed already, and the young chicks can walk through the reeds.
A wheatear atop a rock with a hill in the background topped by a Parthenon-like structure. The structure is the National Monument of Scotland, built as a memorial to the Scottish soldiers and sailors who died fighting in the Napoleonic Wars (with thanks to Wikipedia, it's an interesting article).
A side-on image of a male orange-tip butterfly. The underside of the lower wing is spotchy green on white, ideal for camouflage, but the upper wings are not fully folded in, showing a splash of the orange that gives the butterfly its common name. It is sitting on a cluster of pale pink flowers. I had to check the plant label for this one, it's Syringa x chinensis. The image is framed by out-of-focus green and pink achieved by taking the shot through a gap in the foliage.
A grasshopper warbler calling from its perch in new-growth brambles.
A side view of a butterfly with its wings together so one underside is visible. The wing is brown with cream patches and the background has similar colours with some greens provided by moss on a rock. The grape hyacinth has a cluster of small blue urn-shaped flowers a little like a bunch of grapes.
A peacock butterfly sitting on top of a pale, almost white, daffodil. There are many other daffodils out-of-focus in the image. The trumpets of the daffodils are more yellow.
A terrapin sitting on a small wooden raft that provides a resting place for birds in the middle of a small loch (lake).
A speckled wood sitting on the pale yellow flowers of a Corylopsis (I think Corylopsis sinensis, Chinese winter hazel).
A comma butterfly sitting on a spike of small, blue grape hyacinth flowers with other spikes of the flower out-of-focus in the background. The rest of the background is green from the foliage of the flowers.
A male wheatear standing on a rock.
A small tortoiseshell sitting on a thin branch covered in small white flowers. The butterfly has some damage on the rear of its left wing.
A hairy-footed flower bee on a pulmonaria flower. The bee has the short ginger hairs of a male and the legs hairs that give the common and specific names are visible.
A peacock butterfly sitting on the pink flowers of a rhododendron.
A red admiral sitting with open wings on a cluster of small pink rhododendron flowers (it's Rhododendron dauricum 'Rosa'). The background is mostly pink, provided by out-of-focus flowers on the same bush.
A red admiral with wings spread sitting on a small pink flower at the end of new growth on a rhododendron. The background is a fairly uniform pale brown with some patches of pink, provided by out-of-focus rocks behind and other rhododendron flowers.
A backlit red admiral with sun shining through its spread wings, sitting on the small, tightly clustered pink flowers of Rhododendron dauricum 'Rosa'.
A backlit holly blue on a bramble leaf with gorse flowers in the background.
A tree bumblebee on a gorse flower.
A female teal on an icy surface with some water on it.
A nuthatch descending the trunk of a tree with its head raised.
An oystercatcher on grass.
A redwing sitting on a thin branch.
A small copper on ragwort. In September. In the middle of the day.
A long-tailed tit holding a white feather in its beak.
A wood mouse in short grass.
A grey squirrel with a mostly bald head and face and legs. There is fur on the top of its head and its feet.
A male wigeon on a pond with another out of focus in the background.
A brown rat peering out from a bowl, part of an iron bird feeder.
A waxwing foraging in grass in late afternoon sunlight.