big wood 4

 

31-08-23 Another trip to Saltoun Big Wood. Now you would think this will be just another retread of the past 3 blogs here recently, and while there are similarities, I make no apologies for covering some of the same ground. It is one place, at this time of year, you can be sure of having a great combination of butterflies and dragonflies and there is almost always something of note I won't have come across before. Like Alistair wearing a black darter fascinator!

I pointed the camera at the blue supermoon the other night. While it was an attractive and unexplained shade of orangey red (forest fires, low in the sky, atmospherics etc) it was largely the same as it ever is and I didn't even get any supersharp images. 

I think I took over 70minutes to cycle the 16miles. My pb stands at 64mins and I can't remember why I was slow this time. Possibly headwinds. I buried and padlocked the bike behind the old car park and wandered up to the first pond where I saw Alistair over the other side. My eyes are so bad I wasn't sure if it was definitely him and was trying to see his camera to confirm if it was him or not. Alistair doesn't have a cammo long lens does he? Wrong on both counts. He does have a cammo covered lens and it was him. I waited till he shouted hello before going over to see how he was doing. He was having a splendid time! He had a small camping stool and had been sitting quietly observing everything coming and going. And become so much a part of the environment that common and black darters were landing on him and even squabbling over prime perching spots about his person!

I am a little too impatient to adopt this strategy. I was well jell of his chair but not sure I have a patient enough temperament to sit still for a hour observing the flight paths of hawkers. However it is possibly a better strategy than constantly mooching around stirring stuff up and hoping it lands nearby. Alistair got some cracking in-flight shots of hawkers, something I have been unable to do, although I like to think it is my camera and not myself that is to blame(!) If you have a larger number of pixels (with a DSLR or full frame mirrorless) you can crop a larger image down to a greater extent without it looking blocky or pixelated. But also you have to be able to focus in a fraction of a second, which takes practice and skill as well. And a quality camera. Alistair uses the latest Canon.

I was pleased to note that those recent additions, the Southern Hawkers, are curious in nature and have a tendancy to hover nearby checking one out. This gives the observer a moment longer to refocus although sometimes they are so close that you have to zoom out. Almost impossible but preferable to Common Hawkers that just zip by without pausing to say hello. 

yup defo Alistair!

black darter

how do you photograph this?

There was a black darter had adopted Alistair as a perch and was seeing off any other dragonflies that were also trying to land on him. It was also impossible for him to take photos of it with his long lens (as he couldn't stand far enough back to get it in focus) although he did have his phone to take photos of it on his knee. While we were chatting it landed on his head.

As we were chatting a female Common Hawker landed just near our feet to oviposit in the shallow swamp of reeds and mud. I managed to get some photos and a short blast of video before she flew off. The females doing this are very wary, as patrolling males are constantly on the lookout for females and rarely respect their egglaying duties before grabbing them and carrying them off to mate. It is difficult not to judge the males for this roughshod treatment and condemn them in an anthropomorphic manner for behaviour unbecoming; however they are dragonflies, not humans, and have no doubt been doing this very successfully for 300 million years, quite a bit longer than humans have been around.

male common hawker on birch
female common hawker laying eggs

black darters on the brain

common darter

comma

Alistair and I discussed the problems of dragonfly photography and agreed we should have more sticks and perching posts planted in the shallows. I set off into the woods and returned with a couple of fallen sticks to plant into the mud. Within minutes common and black darters were sitting for photos. Can't think why we didn't do this all round the pond years ago! We also discussed possible lures and decoys. But you'll have to wait for the Big Wood 5 blog for the results of that proposition!

common darter on brand new old stick perch

spider

common darters in cop

knee fly

Keen to see some butterflies I set off to butterfly alley. The red admirals were up in numbers along with loads of commas while the peacocks were looking less fresh than last visit but still out in force.

hairy-arsed fly

I had noticed the red admirals have a tendency to hide in trees when not nectaring at the scabious flowers, and often look better perched among the leaves, or pine needles in the case of the small fir trees lining the trail.

I was pleased to get photos of these walls in cop. The uppermost is the female and she is in better nick than the male underneath who has lost sections of his wings. Just as well she is not as fussy about perfect specimens as I am. Mary condemns this behaviour like I was some sort of eugenicist; I remind her that she used to choose vegetables at the supermarket because she felt sorry for them. You can probably err too much in either direction. 

buzzards overhead

immature male common darter
(possibly)

With the peacocks fading slightly I was more focussed on getting photos of commas and RAs. And rather than just straight close-ups, trying to get some of the atmosphere, sometimes backlit with pleasant background colours of flowers and heather. It is impossible to tell the butterflies what you want them to do, so you just have to work with what is there, while being mindful of the best background available, or staying in a successful area until the right combination occurs. It is never a chore when the sun is shining and you are surrounded by dozens of butterflies; but being out all day in warm weather can be tiring. Also the place is hoaching with ticks, so I try to remember to wipe my legs with Smidge insect repellent beforehand to at least keep them at bay while I crawl around in the long grass. I have found them on my neck and chest a day or 2 later so it is worth doing a check afterwards.

This was an unusually small comma - at first I thought it had suffered a bird attack and lost most of its hind wings but it was all there and was just a weirdly dwarfish version. Possibly due to a lack of proper nutrition during the larval stage but who knows?

female wall in great condition

knackered small tortoiseshell
the only one I saw in 5 visits

aging green-veined white

It is very difficult to take group photos of butterflies. As soon as you pull back enough to get several in shot, they begin to disappear, or flap their wings closed at the wrong moment. Which is a shame as there were many times I wanted to convey the large amounts of butterflies gathered in groups of a dozen or more along a stretch of scabious in the sunshine. I also tried videos, holding the camera down low and walking along the paths as they flapped and hopped from flower to flower. With various results.

For some reason my large camera managed this less well (possibly slightly zoomed in and shaky) and on the subsequent visit I used my iPhone which worked better. Although I then had the prospect of trying to send (email) the video to my PC to process and the lack of a mutual video format. I posted the iPhone video directly on facebook which compresses it horribly. And it seems the video is too large to send by email unless I do it via the Cloud which I am sufficiently unfamiliar with never to be able to retrieve it from WTF is my cloud? A work in progress and some googling* required clearly.

*Okay so I googled. And the answer in case you ever consider doing similar is both straightforward and horribly convoluted. First download on your PC (from the microsoft store) the iCloud app for Windows. (btw DON'T ask google "how do I access my cloud" because it will direct you towards My Cloud, no doubt a webexperience designed to empty bank accounts of people unfamiliar with the ways of the internet.) I never really know whether I am downloading the right thing or not and assume mostly I am giving scammers all my bank details. Sort of joking. You don't pay for this app it is free.

You then open the app and sign in. Due to security reasons - you are opening your most precious iPhone and iPad secrets to those rogues at Windows - they ask that you receive a 6 digit code through your iDevice. You click yes and almost immediately get a notice on your iDevice that someone NEAR LONDON is trying to sign in to your account do you want to show them your drawers? There is no asking anyone "is that near London on a world-wide scale, or on a UK-wide scale because the answer is totally opposite in either case?" So much for security. Tearfully I lie that I am near London. Also have your iPhone identity and password ready. No point in asking what are they and where did I last write them down, you're on your own with that. How long have you had that phone and did you even establish an iArse iDentity? I think you have to be under 30 for this not to infuriate.

However the upshot is I have access to the iPhone movie I shot at Saltoun (and every photo in iPhotos and everything on my iPhone) on my PC now and can tweak it slightly in editing software and upload it in a suitably compressed but not ruined format. I am saving it for Big Wood 5 the finale, so stay tuned. Also watch out for the iCloud app dumping ALL your iRubbish directly onto your PC hard drive. (You can choose what apsects of you iDevice to download to the PC.) I thought the whole point of the Cloud was to keep that shit off your hard drive / iDevice. It would seem that if you delete something from where it is on your PC hard drive it then gets deleted from your iWorld as well so be careful what you wish for. The interface when you first call on the iCloud app is the place to determine what directories you can access in the cloud from your PC and therefore how much extra stuff goes on your PC hard drive. 

 

While the sun is shining there are loads of hawkers flying. When it stops shining the hawkers stop flying almost instantly, like they were solar powered. Where do they all go? I think they are smart enough to hide high up trees. (BTW Comma butterflies are rarely seen mating, and one reason is it is suspected they mate high in trees. It would make sense - hide out of harms way (the exception being birds) when vulnerable.) Occasionaly you will see a hawker fly near trees and land. If you don't see them land you are very likely to walk past them resting, as they are really well camouflaged even though they aren't coloured like the backgrounds they alight on.

female common darter

denis hopper

backswimmer

black darter

Towards the end of the day there were a few darters sat up on the downy thistle tops near the pond. The white fluffy backgrounds made an attractive backdrop for the insects and I got carried away taking photos there.

not sure who this tiny hitchhiker on my arm was

rare shot of a female hawker at rest

While clambering about the undergrowth I came across this female comman hawker and was delighted she sat still for a couple of photos. It was perilously near the pond and she was in danger of being grabbed by a patrolling male. In the photo below she is keeping an eye out for just that, and sure enough in a short time she was jumped by a male. Maybe that was what she wanted? It is impossible to know for sure, but I felt lucky to have got a clear shot and not just the more usual shot of females in the reeds egglaying.

comman darter

Alistair on other side of pond

The teasels just behind AG in that photo were devoid of butterfly activity - just a week ago they were rammed with RAs, peacocks, a comma and a small skipper. Since they dropped their flowers the audience has moved on.

always worth checking birch trunks for dragonflies

end of a glorious day

I think Alistair was jealous of my 16 mile cycle home! (Well maybe not!) I wasn't jealous of him having to go via the shops for messages and I was probably home and looking at my photos before him as there was a tailwind much of the way and I was in the mood for a workout. The tailwind home explains the slowish cycle there. Another fabulous day out - still a favourite place.