{"id":1136,"date":"2008-05-18T22:05:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-18T21:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1136"},"modified":"2013-11-20T21:51:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T21:51:52","slug":"weekend-wildlife","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/weekend-wildlife\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekend wildlife"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

This was a weekend of two halves. Saturday was wet and apart from the foxes (who were on excellent form) was one of the least successful wildlife days for a long time. A couple of gulls in the garden were about the limits, and one further semi-permanent resident: a large red damselfly.
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That photo was taken late Saturday evening, but could have been taken on any evening for the past week. It's not there in the day, but every evening it rests up within a few inches of where it was the previous night. Saturday also saw the dog fox take to his climbing habits (see previous post), though that was just a shade after midnight and doesn't really count. But he was back in the evening, this time with the bold vixen for company.<\/p>\n

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Sunday was altogether better. A bright sunny day, with just a bit of a breeze. The starlings were out in force with the young ones screaming for food and the adults taking good care to answer their call, though I'm not sure if they really want toast for breakfast!
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This young one seems to be faring slightly better, with a standard diet of caterpillars and grubs :yuck:<\/p>\n

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The weather brought the damsels out in force. There were a small number of elegant azure damsels, and a host of the large reds.<\/p>\n

Azure damselfly<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Large red damsels mating<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Following mating, the laying of eggs (ovipositing)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

There are several more photos from this afternoon in my Damselfly album<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And finally, the tiniest of things… baby spiders. I almost missed them, but something made me look again as I went past some ivy in the garden. On closer inspection I saw that there were hundreds of baby spiders.<\/p>\n

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They are absolutely tiny. There was an ant near them which seemed positively huge in comparison. At least with a tiny nest like this they aren't going to run anywhere fast, so I was able to set up properly (tripod, extension tubes, ring-flash etc) and grab a close-up.<\/p>\n

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Camera note: The foxes were photographed with the EF70-300mm 4.5-5.6 DO IS, and the birds with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS. All the insects\/spiders were photographed with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro and various combinations of extension tubes and 1.4 teleconverter. I used the ring-flash for some of the macro shots.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[980,309,4,1009],"tags":[33,1128,232,1132],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds-2","category-damselfly","category-foxes","category-spiders-2","tag-birds","tag-fox","tag-insect","tag-spider","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t