Mosstastic

The Safari has had a bit of a duff Sunday. It didn't start off too well with a big fat zero in the moth trap again. Last night we set up the steath-cam overlooking the pond, a bit of a forlorn attempt to get some pics of our very illusive Frogs, we didn't hear them croaking last night and didn't really expect them to be caught on the camera as it works on infra-red and Frogs are the same temperature as their surroundings - but you never know...either it didn't work (most likely) or the Frogs didn't show (possible).

we could here the Song Thrush sang from the Golden Triangle and our now resident(?) male Chaffinch was singing from the end of the garden.

We were waiting to go out when it started raining so we left it a bit longer. By now Frank needed to go out for a walk so he took us to Magpie Wood where we saw a Great Spotted Woodpecker fly in, the direction it came from suggested if we'd stayed at Base Camp a few minutes longer we might have seen it as a garden tick, they've become very scarce since the neighbours hacked the top off their large Sycamore tree.

It took a good while for Frank to get back home and then he was too tired to go out anywhere else so we had little option but to watch the garden.

The feeders at Base Camp are still busy with six Greenfinches visiting at one time. Goldfinches and a pair of Great Tits were also regular visitors. Three Collared Doves together was a bit of a surprise. Later a small flock of Long Tailed Tits came through suggesting they haven't started to think about pairing up yet.

The light was grotty and although it was passing the time watching the feeders we felt like there should be more to the day. Then, rather too late, we had a bit of a brainwave; yesterday we'd been reading arch-rival Monika's blog about a book based on the life of 19th century botanist Alma Whittaker. 

Inspired about mosses we got the macro lens out and headed off in to the deepest depths of the garden in search of miniature forests, the plastic/fibreglass waterfall gave us our only subjects but the light was awful by now even with our ring-lights shutter speeds were too slow to negate any hand-shake...these are the best of a big bad bunch...need to try on a brighter day.

Alma Whittaker was right - there's a whole new universe down at the almost microscopic scale, lovely textures and colours too...certainly more to investigate more thoroughly...can't wait!

Where to next? Back to Patch 2 tomorrow and the rest of the week we've got loads of school groups to keep enthralled for Science Week. One of the days we're out of school with a class on the nature reserve.

In the meantime let us know who's been revealed in the microscopic world in your outback.