AnnMarie’s Blog

{Sticky Post - latest blog entry below}

Just a few introductory images, if you’d like to find out more about the site or me, click the about tab at the top.

If you are looking to commission a photographer, please do view my business site.

And here’s one I prepared earlier, well not really I haven’t qualified for my broomstick yet! A few more trips to Dayagon Alley are needed

What I really mean to say is that I took these two pictures in early spring but omitted to post them. Spring is a good time to see frogs & toads, they are busy mating or looking for a mate. This couple were certainly very busy:

   Common Toads (Bufo bufo) - mating

I so nearly trod on them whilst looking up for a bird, fancy that, making out on a track in broad daylight, the shock of it. Seriously though, Toads get quite determined, the smaller male climbs onto the female’s back and holds on tight - he doesn’t want any other males to dislodge him before he’s sure that he’s fertilised the eggs. This mating position is called amplexus and as is the case with our happy couple above, sometimes a female is ambushed before she reaches her watery spawning site. Toad spawn is laid in strings, as opposed to the clumps that are typical of frog spawn.

For comparison here is a picture of a common frog:

   Common Frog (Rana temporaria)

I thought he looked rather shocked & lonely and it turned out I was correct … he was the survivor of a young grey heron’s attempts at clearing many frogs from this damp area.

Trivia Fact: Did you know that Common Toads can live up to 40 years of age.

We’ve been a little concerned about the swallows & house martins this year; but all seems to be well now. Having heard of the poor weather in southern Africa just when their northerly migration was starting, it was worrying to see fewer than normal in the initial arrival. As time has gone on more & more have arrived such that we now have large numbers hunting for insects over the fields.

The house martin chicks in the nests on the house are now quite close to fledging, it seems quite a squeeze in those mud nests. In one particular nest the 5th chick has been pushed out, falling to his death in the nighttime but the other 4 seem very well, as per the image sequence below:

  Its squashed in here

  Incoming

  Some for you

   Oi! Give me some

    I’m going to swallow them both.

The parents are both hunting almost constantly through the daylight hours and with only 3 or so minutes between each foray there must be a large number of insects going in to the chicks!

This spring we added a new feeding station for our wild birds. It seems to have been quite a hit, especially with the youngsters. Some of them are very quick to get to grips with things, like the sparrow fledglings; others aren’t too sure at first, like a certain little blue tit.

Anyway I’ve pieced together a short (~3min - 10Mb) video for you to take a look, just click the link below & then the play button …

The greater Spotted Woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) is the most common woodpecker in the British Isles. In fact there are thought to be about 25 million of them living in Europe.

Image Details: Focal Length 700mm 3 exposure mosaic Juvenile - note red cap Click image for a larger view …

I have a particular fondness for ‘woody’ and so I’m very pleased to have spotted at least 3 families nesting with us this year. They are real characters and it is fun watching the parents bring up their young. They are fairly nervous birds and don’t seem to like close human attention but with patience its surprising how much you can observe.

To identify the family members look for red markings on the head and neck; the male (3rd picture) has a red nape to his neck, whilst the female (2nd picture, below) has no red on head or neck, the juveniles (top picture) have a red cap, the young male’s often being brighter & larger than his sister’s.

Image Details:Focal Length 1400mm Female - note no red head markings Click image for a larger view …

They are resident all the year around across much of Europe and eat insects, seeds & nuts. They are also rumoured to take small birds eggs / chicks, if times are hard. Happily our families seem to feast on the peanuts that we put out, the many conifer cones in the woodland and of course our bountiful insect harvest!

They are well known for their rapid drumming on hollow trunks, which can be heard from quite a distance and have a specially adapted beak & skull to avoid injuring themselves whilst drumming. It seems that wooden electricity poles are especially good for drumming on, as many a frustrated engineer will tell you Their tongue is long and sticky enabling the recovery of insects from holes in wood or even choice peanut fragments from a feeder.

Image Details: Focal Length 400mm Male - note red nape Click image for a larger view …

For more on that tongue, can you make it out in the picture below? The barbs are just visible pushing the peanut chip up against the juvenile’s top beak. This picture isn’t ideal & I’m working on taking a sharper one but it’ll have to do for now.

To find out more about woodpeckers, try following some of these links:

RSPB page with sound & video

Wiki article on the Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Birds of Britain article on same

or try these two sources for more general Woodpecker articles Britannica or How stuff works.

Oh and if you like my images don’t forget that many are available as prints from my business sites; in fact I hope to have a woodpecker poster out this autumn (08).

As part of my summer project (an exploration of Cygnus), I am aiming to create a detailed mosaic of the Cygnus Loop (Veil Nebula). The clouds have not been helpful so far and the forecast for the next few weeks is no better However I have had chance to take a test widefield image of the loop region.

This image is intended as the rough outline for my mosaic, the lid of the jigsaw puzzle box, if you like. It consists of 5 x 5 minute sub exposures at ISO 800 & f3.2; so not much integration time but hopefully deep enough.

   Click image for a larger view …

Anyway, with the lack of available imaging time, I thought I’d share the above image with you. Hopefully something is better than nothing!

Image Data:

The whole nebulous area is a remnant of an ancient Supernova that took place some 15 to 20 thousand years ago. It is located only about 2,600 light years away from Earth.

It is catalogued as several separate entries including NGC6960 (the Witch’s Broom or Western Veil) to the right & NGC6992 (the Eastern Veil) to the left. Also included are NGC6995 (below 6992), NGC6974 & 6979 (top middle-left) and Fleming’s Triangular Wisp (top middle-right).

To view this region in Worldwide Telescope follow this link.

Watch this space over the coming months for a more detailed image (oh & please wish me clear skies!).

This beautiful moth is extremely well named, on summer nights you might see the male dancing its ghostly dance across your garden. He is trying to attract a mate with his rapidly moving wing beats whilst hovering & darting just above the vegetation.

The scientific name for this moth is Hepialus humuli. The female is more yellowy than the male (who is in both of my pictures here).

I used off camera flash to help me with these shots, manual focusing in the near dark was the trickiest problem.

For a different view, why not take a look at the wildlife trust’s page.

The North American Nebula (NGC7000) & the neighbouring Pelican Nebula (IC5070) are just 2 of the beautiful cosmic sights to be seen in the constellation of Cygnus, "The Swan". Having undertaken a brief tour of Cygnus last summer, I am encouraged to do so in more depth this year - providing time & weather cooperate for me! To start it off I wanted some Hydrogen alpha (Ha) data for these two beautiful nebulae.

Last week I had the only reasonably clear night for some time and so set out to capture the data in widefield. After waiting for clouds to clear and then sorting out a few initial problems I had little time left for imaging before dawn. I did however manage to capture 7 x 5minute exposures @ f3.2 that I was happy with.

  Click image for a larger view …

Image Data:

After processing the Ha data in Iris, I looked out some of my archive RGB data (20D & 100-400 L f5.6 1.5hrs) of the region and set about combining it. The combine process involved adding some of the Ha to the red channel (thus reinforcing the nebula saturation) and then using the Ha as a luminosity layer. Layer opacity was adjusted by eye before a high pass filtering and final output. {This is based on a method by Don Goldman}. A small version of the completed HaRGB image is shown below.

   Click image for a larger view …

For those of you with Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope, click here to load and view the region.

About this region:

Cygnus lies right across the Milky Way, it contains both large clouds of ionised hydrogen & dark regions of interstellar dust. These two phenomena combine to give us the beautiful shapes and patterns seen above. The nebulae are thought to be about 1900 light years distant. To read more about these nebulae try the articles on the Wiki or on Britannica.