In July the birds go quiet and birdwatchers become butterfly watchers.  The Mounts are an old clay quarry, rubbish dump, school playing fields, and now a sort of unofficial park where people walk their dogs among the overgrown grass. The numerous thistle flowers usually bring in the butterflies at this time of year, and in the good weather they didn't disappoint - although there were far fewer speckled woods this year, we saw lots of painted ladies.  The latter we usually see one every couple of year; this time we saw them so often we could tell they must have bred.  And as well as the usual meadow browns, gatekeepers and commas, we saw a small copper which is apparently quite rare!

Spent Father's Day taking Dad around Attenborough. Lots of young birds - Reed Warblers and Whitethroats, Tree Sparrows, Great Tits, Coot, Moorhen, Mute Swan and Mallard all got photographed.

There were also a large number of Banded Demoiselle dragonfly-type creatures around; enough that we saw a sparrow catch (and drop) one, one got caught and eaten by a spider, and we found just the wings of another on the path. Mating Ladybirds and a bunch of Peacock Butterfly caterpillars, and some strange cricket-type critters, were amongst the other insects we saw, not counting all the flies and midges.

A walk around Colwick Country Park, with lots of goslings.

A proper test of my new camera: London in the Winter sun. The lack of an image stabiliser coupled with the low light conditions made for some frustrations, but it wasn't as grainy as I thought when I first got it: I'd accidentally pressed the high speed button and got a high-ISO, very grainy pic. Also don't know how to use the rose properly - it's supposed to shield the lens from glare, but just ended up getting in the way of my wide-angled shots.

We weren't quite sure what the hell was going on when we started getting ushered down this covered roadway, until we ended up with a big crowd of people watching the Horse Guards doing their thing - so, a nice surprise in the end.

This is my attempt at some solo birdwatching, which is to say, going out on a cold, windy day, take a lot of photographs, and hope that I can make them out when I'm back somewhere warm. A couple of short movies I took on the day didn't make the cut - I took them more to get the sounds of the Redshank warning calls, but all I got was the sound of the wind.

To cut to the chase, there's a lot of Redshank here, along with Dunlin, Oystercatcher, and Grey Plover. Oh, and the usual Mute Swan, gulls etc.

The weather wasn't great, so the usual Winter problem of dark, blurry photos reared its head again.

Miscellaneous wildlife pics; mostly taken at work!

A walk in the sunshine around Colwick Country Park