{"id":1162,"date":"2008-06-24T00:06:33","date_gmt":"2008-06-23T23:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/archives\/1162"},"modified":"2013-11-20T20:32:41","modified_gmt":"2013-11-20T20:32:41","slug":"an-unusual-magpie-and-other-strange-creatures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/an-unusual-magpie-and-other-strange-creatures\/","title":{"rendered":"An unusual magpie and other strange creatures"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

A magpie is a black and white bird. Right? Wrong! Well wrong in this case when it turns out to be Abraxas grossulariata<\/i>, otherwise known as The Magpie moth. I saw this one while out in the garden this evening. It settled, and I was amazed at the colourful display which seems so wasted on a night flyer.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

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Seeing the moth got me looking further and next on the list of small creatures was a grasshopper.<\/p>\n

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The strangest creature of all though was the next one, which comes with a standard spider alert :bug::bug: It's a nursery web spider, but it took me ages to figure out what was actually going on. It appeared to be perched on a large (comparatively speaking) stone. In fact, she's carrying a cocoon she creates around her egg sac and carries about with her until she creates a nursery web for the young to hatch into.<\/p>\n

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For those keen on spiders, there are more shots of her in the Arachnids<\/a> album.<\/p>\n

On other fronts, the young gulls were sleepy today. I couldn't see the 'lower deck' chick this morning. It's situated on a part of the roof which is 40% obscured from my vantage point. But it was there at lunchtime, sheltering from the sun.
<\/span> <\/p>\n

Other sightings today included a mistle thrush<\/a>, and a pair of kestrels out hunting, including one which seemed to have had some success<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Camera note: the moth, grasshopper and spider were photographed with the Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro lens. The gull chick was captured with the EF 100-400mm f\/4.5-5.6L USM IS lens.<\/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":[991,251,1009],"tags":[1177,72,1162,1132],"class_list":["post-1162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insects-2","category-moth","category-spiders-2","tag-chick","tag-grasshopper","tag-moth","tag-spider","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.permuted.org.uk\/photography\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}