Cygnet Fluff

I found this little Cygnet along with its parents at Radipole Lake, Weymouth.

Surprisingly it was the only Cygnet that the pair of Mute Swans had. 

Chalk Hill Blue Butterfly

Although the Chalk Hill Blue is not one of our more bright multi-coloured species, it is I believe of a fine classic colouring.  Close examination reveals minute detail and it is always a pleasure to photograph.

It flies between early July through to early September. Featured in this post is the male. The female has predominantly brown upperwings. Unfortunately I was unable to find any females during this shoot.

A Portland Walk

My latest Walk around the lower part of Portland revealed a few more butterflies than I have found recently.

Firstly, a view of the Portland Bird Observatory which of course use to be a lighthouse. 

The first Red Admiral I have seen this year that is one of the new brood.

I was pleased to observe this female Broad-bodied Chaser Dragonfly ovipositing at the edge of the newly created small pond.

To freeze this inflight dragonfly, I needed to set the camera speed to !/8000.

Below is the male which I already featured before in a previous post as well.

A male Common Blue butterfly was also very pleasing to find considering the lack of them recently.

One butterfly I have seen plenty of this year is the Small Heath.

This Skylark was singing away on a fence post.

This distant male Linnet below was also in good voice.

A welcome resting place for lunch.

This seat constructed of Stone has been there as long as I have visited Portland and probably many years before.

A good number of Gatekeeper butterflies was observed.

I would normally expect to see plenty of the Marbled White butterflies at this time. 

Unfortunately the only one I could find is this rather bedraggled male that has been around for a while.

 

The Current Nature Offerings and Missed Items

In this post I have included current images taken on my latest walk and some that I had taken very recently and misplaced on the computer.

Common Maple

The other day I could only track down the female Banded Demoiselle damselflies.

I have now been able to catch up with the males.

The image below is somewhat different. It is what happens when you set the camera on f4 Aperture and without noticing you have accidently moved a dial and set the ISO to 51200.

However the result was interesting.

A few butterfly species are beginning to show, like this Green-veined White.

The Red Admiral

High up on this tall bramble trying to get as much of the limited sun as possible, which was tempered by a cool wind.

Greenfinch

Meadow Brown (Female)

This Wren suddenly flew to a branch beside me as I was walking over a small bridge and started singing.

Distant shots of airborne Sand Martins.

Pedunculate Oak

Taken the other day I was able to get these distant shots of a Wren feeding and teaching a young Wren how to gather food.

Hedge Bindweed makes a nice image with the green surrounds.