Bees & Bugs, Sally D's Mobile Photography Challenge

A B&W Bee for Sally D’s Mobile Challenge

I’m wanting to get back to my favourite photo challenges this year, and also attempt some haiku once my revision frenzy is over.

To this end, I took this photograph for Sally D’s challenge with the Nokia Lumia 520 Windows Phone – both versions are cropped and processed in GIMP. I had intended it for nature week, but black-and-white week is already here!

Bee on a weed (Nokia Lumia 520 WP) B&W

Bee on a weed (Nokia Lumia 520 WP)

 

Sally D has an incredible photo again – Afternoon Light and Leaf Photomontage – and she has some clever word pictures to go along with it. The montage is best viewed full size.

Thanks for looking. Have a great week!

🙂

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Birds

Common Blackbird

The Common Blackbird was introduced to Australia in the 1850s and was originally confined to Melbourne and Adelaide. Now considered a pest in Eastern Australia, its habitat has spread inland, and as far north as Sydney and down into Tasmania and the Bass Islands. Fearful of it becoming a pest to commercial crops and competing with native wildlife, the blackbird is destroyed on sight in Western Australia. Another true thrush, the Song Thrush, has also been introduced. We have several native thrushes of our own.

I have a pair of blackbirds living in my garden.

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They nest in my jasmine creeper which has bushed over a garden arch. Before that, they nested in my rose tree when I had let it get a bit overgrown. You can imagine my surprise when I pruned it that year. It had a couple of old eggs in the nest, and I was able to identify them as belonging to the blackbirds.

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a little one behind our wood pile

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The pair have a new brood in the jasmine, but I’m wary of having a look. The last time I did that, the chicks vanished the day after I took a photo of them. They had only just hatched. The blackbirds abandoned my yard for most of 2016. I wondered if they took their babies to one of their old nests.

I love watching them getting themselves a feed. I can certainly believe they are destructive in vegetable gardens from the way they forage around our wood pile. They scatter bark and wood chips all over the place.

Thanks for looking. Do have a good weekend!  🙂

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I love it when I learn something new.

All my life -I’m nearly 62 now – I’ve been calling this common white butterfly a cabbage moth. I took these pictures the other day and I thought I should find out if it really was a moth. As I suspected, it’s not.

 

Wikipedia says…

Pieris rapae, the small white, is a small- to medium-sized butterfly species of the whites-and-yellows family Pieridae. It is also known as the small cabbage white and in New Zealand, simply as white butterfly….

It is widespread and populations are found across Europe, North Africa, Asia, South America, and Great Britain. It has also been accidentally introduced to North America, Australia and New Zealand.

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My dad was a great one for growing vegetables. I can recall one weekend, when these mo… er… cabbage whites were really troublesome, he employed a few of us kids in their destruction. Armed with tennis rackets, we got lots of exercise. Feels so very wicked, now.

I can’t believe it’s nearly the weekend again already! I have worked really hard on my revision this week and am still loving Taniel. That must be a good sign.

I had my quarterly checkup this morning. The nurse started me on a new Annual Plan which means I get 3 free physio sessions and 2 podiatry visits during 2017. Last year, physio did wonders for my sore hips and included acupuncture. I ended up paying for two extra visits as I did need more treatment. I can’t imagine having that sort of pain for any length of time. It was horrible.

Unfortunately, I’ve ignored exercise and diet since my last checkup and am now the weight I was several years ago. But, I’m starting again with the usual resolutions. Before signing off on the nurse’s report the doctor checked a couple of spots on my face. Since they have irregular edges, she is going to chop one out next Thursday and have it checked. I’ve been slack with the sunscreen – despite knowing the dangers or UV. I reckon it’s just a sunspot though.

Thanks for reading and do have a great weekend.  🙂

 

 

Butterflies & Moths

Small White:Pieris rapae

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