Moving pictures....

Regular readers will know that I occasionally use some of my brother's pictures....
but I felt I had to publish this...
now he's into moving pictures...
on the Breckland Express!!
even though it has nothing to do with Aigronne Valley Wildlife....
[although it is famous for the Stone Curlews on one of the Thetford Forest heaths.]

You can find the original on Nick's flickr pages...  the picture next left from this.

All in all a total of five of his pictures were used on this train.
Not bad, methinks... certainly one for the portfolio!!


There is more on the Brecks. including yet at least another of Nick's pix in the header [the one with the light streaming through the trees], here at The Brecks.
For lovers of natural history, I would happily recommend an exploration of this area...
apart from the Ice Age relict pingos on Thomson Common, there are sites where freeze/thaw action toward the end of the last Ice Age created geometric shapes...
mainly hexagons...
in the soil by separating the stones from the soil...
in these areas a different growth occurs on the two types of substrate...
and the resulting shapes can be seen from the air.
This leads to a more open habitat that favours plants that find competition difficult.

06/08/2013... Just discovered that there was only one other photographer involved...
Debbie Harris of 2up Photography...
she gives a fuller account of the launch on her website...
there's a nice shot of Nick in action fouteen pictures down...
he's developed quite a good "image stabilizer" [much like a darts player]...
I think he needs to come and do some raking of the grass here!!


To take a leaf [sic] from Susan of DotC:
Meadow update...
we lost about half of one of the original five "trognes" in the storm that followed one day after the last posting. I managed to cut a way through the rank vegetation, yesterday, with Betsy and found that it is still connected at the root end.

So, this winter, I will cut all the top growth off at an oblique angle and let it regrow as a supplier of small rods... and become a nesting place for the birds.

Almost all paths are re-cut...
and future work noted...
a lot of clearance this winter being one of the priorities...
it is getting really too dark and gloomy up the weir end!!

Butterflies abound.... huge quantities of Gatekeepers are around... also the biggest numbers of Marbled Whites and Clouded Yellows I've seen.... both in the teens [visible at any one time].
I've not yet managed to photograph the Clouded Yellows...
they only stop and pose when they know I haven't got a camera!!

The huge Sauterelles [Bush Crickets] have arrived in the potager area...
so watch out you Doryphores....
to the Sauterelle, orange means food...
not "yuck"  don't eat.
The Glow-worms are glowing...
saw three the other night...
two were using our white calcaire path as an "amplifier"

I'll post more on all this, but, with the harvest in full swing, watch out for the bigger raptors...
we've had Hen and Montague's Harriers around after hay has been cut....
but, as the rape in the field next door was being cut, a Black Kite was following the combine... swooping to catch rodents that had been pushed into open ground!
And, on the way to Loches, I caught the unmistakable profile of a Booted Eagle heading towards an area being worked!

No pictures of mine... don't want to detract from Nick's picture [as if mine could!!]