I see these little wasps quite often on sunny days at this time of year. They are very small and move fast so they are difficult to photograph but even they stop for breath occasionally. This is a ruby-tailed wasp, probably Chrysis ignita, the commonest of several similar species. It has a shiny exoskeleton as armour and even the female has no sting.
The ruby-tailed wasp is a kleptoparasite, laying its eggs in the nests of solitary wasps, particularly Ancistrocerus spp. While I was watching it I saw what I think is an Ancistrocerus wasp, the host species.
Ruby-tailed wasps also parasitise solitary bees. I saw one near the leafcutter bee nest a couple of weeks ago but it took no interest in the nest.
This is the vixen who visits the garden every night. She is often here first and gets to eat any tasty treats that are a bit more exciting than just dog biscuits. She is on alert as she approaches the food, mainly concerned about other foxes or late dog-walkers rather than being near the house.
Here the dog has arrived. She greeted him with a snarl to discourage him from getting too close. Note the tail curl which means don't even think about stealing my dinner.
Here the two of them are observing social distancing, filmed through the kitchen window on my iPhone. The vixen is on the right.
Even though she can't see me the vixen is much more likely to look towards the camera, something the dog rarely does. Perhaps she just likes having her photo taken.
Her cubs will be weaned by now but I haven't yet seen one in the garden. I hope they will be here soon.
This is the dog fox that visits the garden every night. He is easy to recognise as he is slimmer and looks longer-legged than his mate, although they are the same height shoulder to shoulder.
He also has a torn right ear and a slimmer face than the vixen.
I am sure he is a different animal from last year's dog who was greyer and was very relaxed - he regularly lay down to eat. This fox is wary as he approaches the food outside the back door, more concerned about other foxes and late dog-walkers than me or the house. He stops to look and scent the air before coming closer.
A few nights ago he turned up in the rain, looking very agitated and constantly looking around for danger. When he turned round I could see he had two fresh wounds under his chin.
Perhaps this was from a fight with a dog or another fox, or perhaps an injury from barbed wire, but he was certainly upset. He gobbled some biscuits for a few minutes and then trotted away. Two nights later he was back to his normal self, with no sign of injury, and was happy to pose for a few portraits.
He certainly is a handsome devil, and I think he knows it.
Here is something I haven't seen before. I have seen lots of male emperor dragonflies and several females but until this morning I had never seen a mating pair. They stayed in a mating wheel for 12 minutes, giving me plenty of time to take a few photos and a short video. I also had time to experiment with different compositions and depths of field. I think I prefer the shallow depth of field, the last of of these four which are at f/11, f/8, f/7.1 and f/4.
I tried a video with my Canon camera but with a 300mm lens it is too heavy for hand-held video. This was shot on my little Panasonic TZ90.
Eventually they separated and the female flew off to powder her nose before getting down to the serious business of egg laying. The male rested for a few minutes to get his breath back and then went back on patrol in the hope of striking up another liaison.
This all began last week when I found an interesting feather on the lawn (you can see there isn't much grass in the lawn!).
It is a primary flight feather from a tawny owl. A couple of days later I found another one. The next night the trail camera was set to look at the foxes and there were two short recordings of what looked like a tawny owl catching worms.
On one of the clips of the dog fox you can also hear an owl in the background.
The following night I set four cameras on the lawn with no result (apart from foxes all over the place) but on the second night one of the cameras recorded this video. The action is brief so I have added a slow motion replay.
It is interesting that the owl sits so still, presumably because it is listening. Interesting as well that it looks hard at the camera. Owls are said not to be able to see infrared light but the camera also clicks occasionally - whether this is something audible from outside, or just a fault on the audio track I don't know. There was a following clip but the owl was too quick for the reaction time of the camera and all that was recorded was a couple of leaves stirring in the downdraught from the wings after it took off.
This past week the garden has been full of woodpeckers and there is nearly always one on the feeder. To save me having to spend too much time trying to catch the right moment I set up a trail camera to watch them. Eventually it picked up good examples of an adult feeding a youngster.
On the next video a jay has jumped up to have a look around (it is usually on the ground collecting fallen peanut chips). The woodpecker is wary and stops feeding to keep an eye on the jay. You can hear a young woodpecker calling for food in the background.
The videos above were recorded on a Browning trail camera with a +1.25 dioptre lens, giving good focus on the fence post (0.9m away) and the feeder (2m away). I also tried the Wingscapes BirdCam Pro. Although this has an adjustable focus and was developed and marketed for taking video of "wildlife in your backyard" it doesn't do as well. It can't cope as well with the bright/dark contrast and is generally less clear at this range. The sound is also quite muted on this camera. It did, however, pick up a few interesting clips. Here is another example of an adult feeding a fledgling. You can see the problem with getting the young bird in the right place.
And here a youngster is fed by its father on the feeder. It returns to the feeder a moment before a female lands on the other side. This is not the mother and she gives it a swipe to knock it off. The young bird returns to the fence post to see what went wrong and to think about what to do next.
A lot of that goes on. There is competition between adults for access to the food, and between fledglings which often take a swipe at each other. I have only occasionally seen an adult obviously accompanied by two youngsters at the same time and in that case they seem to get on well with each other. Otherwise it is every woodpecker for himself. To cope with the extra demand I have put up another peanut feeder. Within the next week all the fledglings will be able to feed themselves so there will be less interest in the video and photography and I'll be able to concentrate on other things. Fox cubs perhaps?
I look forward to the first week of June every year because it sees the arrival of newly-fledged woodpeckers in the garden. This year I saw the first on 31st May but it has been difficult to get good photos, mainly because of the change in the weather making it dark under the trees. I usually hear them first as they sit high in the trees calling for food while their parents collect it from the feeders. Soon they are confident enough to come a bit nearer but they don't sit still, flitting off to a different spot just when I have the camera nicely lined up. Within a couple of days they can feed themselves and the parents leave them to it. I set up the (open) sitting room window as a hide with a photogenic old fence post outside and spent some time trying to get a few photos and videos. The parents and the youngsters on their own are easy but getting them together and feeding is more of a challenge. Here is a young bird being typically unto-operative, both with me and with its mother.
After several failed attempts the first success was a photo taken through the hinge of the window, not where I had hoped they would be at all.
Many times a fledgling would sit on the fence post but jump up into the tree before the parent brought the food.
Then eventually I got what I wanted. A parent and a fledgling on the fence post together.
I have also been trying a few videos, partly because I already have plenty of photos and because video gives more insight into behaviour. Here is a first attempt with the birds on the log feeder. It caught me by surprise before I was properly set up - the video is too closely cropped, and is wobbly because I was holding the camera, and the crunching noise is from the polystyrene balls in the bean bag, and the fledgling was round the back of the feeder - but you can see the potential.
Here is a fledgling bouncing up and down with excitement but of course it flew up into a tree before the food arrived.
This is a bit better with feeding on the fence post. Three examples although the first is still a bit wobbly and crunchy.
In the next video an adult bird brought food from the peanut feeder but then realised there were a few peanuts in the top of the post (I wonder how they got there?). So it decided to use them but chopped them up before handing them over, interesting behaviour as it was making sure the food wasn't too big for the youngster to swallow. The whole episode lasted more than five minutes but I have edited it down to just over one.
The adult birds have a pecking order - somehow a new arrival can tell whether to attack or to wait its turn and sometimes the bird on the feeder will leave as soon as it sees a more dominant bird has arrived. The adults aren't too keen on other youngsters either. This clip is another on the log feeder - an adult male gives way to a more dominant bird, leaving its fledgling behind, and the new bird (a female) realises the youngster is there and chases it away.
Video is harder than it looks. There is usually a steady arrival of new fledglings over the first couple of weeks of June because not all broods fledge at the same time, so if the weather is better in the next day or two I may be able to get a bit more practice. Within the next week all the youngsters will be able to feed themselves and there will be less excitement in the video and photography. I have just noticed it is six years to the day since my first post on this blog. In that time there have been 1169 posts (including this one), and the first one was on newly-fledged great spotted woodpeckers.
