We headed back to the site where we saw the young kestrels a couple of weeks ago, but the nesting box was deserted. I presume they've fledged and moved into the more natural cover of the woods. One kestrel did fly overhead (as indeed did a Spitfire… it must be airshow season again), but the outstanding feature today was the countless burnet moths.
These are daytime moths which exude a toxin to deter predators. They're not the most elegant of moths in flight, despite their extremely rapid wing beat. I think these are 5-spot burnets (happy as always to be corrected). 
On the garden front, the vixen is generally appearing quite late (occasionally with a cub) which has meant fewer photos, but the hedgehogs are around as is the wood mouse. The badgers have been back as well, and I've even managed another terrible photo… this time of the badger heading away from me to the back of the garden. At least this time it was moving at a sedate pace.
To make up for the near impossibility of gaining any impression of a badger from that picture, I've put together the trailcam footage from the same night (Thursday/Friday).
Camera note: the moth shots were taken with either the EF 400mm f/5.6L USM (distant shots) or the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro (close-ups), both mounted on a Manfrotto 458B Neotec tripod.
9 Comments
Very nice.
At least badger decided to stay around so there will be new possibilities for a good shot.
Nice photos, i have edited about 150 so far, usually deleting a lot of the usual aircraft shots that i take and focusing it more on the holiday ones lol. 😛
I wonder if they have Foxes in Majorca or mainland Spain?
That badger looks like it's got a petal on its back at the beginning of the movie clip!
Very pretty moths. I like the cinnabar moths too, but we don't see many of those these days due to the war on ragwort.
Darko, I keep waiting outside but so far without much luck. But I'll keep trying.
Adele, something is certainly caught on its back. A leaf seem likely. Cinnabars are beautiful, but so far I haven't seen any this year. Plenty of ragwort around though.
Thanks Robin!
Mark, good luck with the editing. You could be there a while. And yes they do have foxes in Spain. And books about them.
Oh yes thats true…… The Mask of Zorro film and Zorro is Spanish for Fox hehe. 😛