nature – Page 3 – eternal magpie

An old lady and a wet rabbit.

Today, the rabbit escaped. He lives indoors, but I must have left his gate ajar, because he managed to make a dash for it into the garden. Paul came home from work to help me capture him, and while he was moving some pieces of wood around (Paul, not the rabbit), I spotted this great big moth.

It turned out to be an Old Lady (Mormo maura), and I took this photo of it while we were waiting for the rabbit to decide whether he was going to stay underneath my Shed all afternoon.

Eventually Paul managed to capture Mister Stinkyface (real name Johnny Depp, long story, not our fault!), and we took advantage of his captivity to unceremoniously dump him in the bath and give him a wash.

After more than an hour of wrestling with an angry, wet rabbit, we eventually decided he was as clean as he was ever going to be, and let him go.

As you can see, he is NOT IMPRESSED by this outrageous treatment.

Perhaps that’ll teach him not to go around escaping in future!

Blue Print

I’ve been wanting to make photograms with the toddlers at work for ages, but so far the summer’s been nothing but wet and horrible!

This “sun print” paper had been at the back of a cupboard for quite a while, so I wasn’t convinced it would still work. In order to check, I brought the packet home with me and made this test print.

I chose a nice big leaf with holes in it (hence the speckles), and Sarah provided a board and a piece of glass to hold it all in place. We left the paper to its own devices while we went for a foraging walk and a chipnic.*

We found a big clump of plum trees that we need to go back to in about a week, although we did manage to pick quite a lot between us! We also met a stag beetle, saw a nightshade with pretty purple flowers, and managed to find a few ripe blackberries along the way. Chatting about photography, printing, dyeing and other projects as we walked, it was a lovely way to spend a sunny Sunday evening.

When we got home, we rinsed the print and hung it up to dry in Sarah’s airing cupboard. Sarah popped it through my letterbox this morning, and I’m really pleased with it! Definitely an activity to do with the kids – if the sun’s out for my next Toddler Time…

*Buying chips from the chip shop, and eating them out of doors.

Leaf rubbings on silk

This is another little experiment with natural materials and silk – this time some leaf rubbings. I did this activity with the children at work a couple of weeks ago, with crayons and sugar paper, when it occurred to me that it would probably work just as well with silk. A couple of leaves from the garden later, and what do you know? It does!

The rubbings are done with Derwent Inktense pencils, with varying degrees of water applied to the silk to see what would work best. I also used this little sample to practice my hand-rolled hemming. I think you can see that I started on the right and finished on the left! A finer needle and thread are called for, I think, to keep the stitching properly invisible. I also need to do a bit more practice to get the leaf rubbings just right, so I think I’ve just found a handy use for all the dye samples.

There’s a bigger piece of silk steeping in tea at the moment, waiting to be turned into a scarf. It’s two metres long and half a metre wide, so that’ll give me five metres of hem, and a nice big space to practice on.

So much for summer

Well, it’s the middle of July – the point of the year at which I’d usually be complaining about my Shed turning into a sauna, and my skin turning lobster-coloured.

Instead I’m sitting here in the dark, with the heater on, looking out at the rain.

So much for summer.

We’re still trying to get outside as much as we can though, dashing out for short walks between the rain showers.

Just as we were heading home last night, we saw two foxes in the fields. My camera couldn’t manage to catch them in the twilight, but it was lovely to watch them for a while.

Summer Walk

It finally felt a little bit like summer, for about an hour at lunchtime today. I’ve been ill for most of this week, and cooped up indoors, so I thought I’d brave a little walk.

The hydrangea above, and these poppies, are in the garden of my local church. It’s a brand new building with a brand new garden, but a few small plants are finally starting to establish themselves.

I do love my little camera. It’s a Pentax Optio A30, about five years old, and it took this picture all by itself, on the super macro setting. The only post-processing I did was to crop the image into a square.

Sadly it’s just about on its last legs (it’s terrible in low light, and barely speaking to the batteries), which means I’m going to have to replace it. I’m not looking forward to that, partly because I can’t afford a new camera, and partly because this one’s been so lovely that I’m completely spoiled by it.

This hogweed (I think!) grows at the side of the path down to the underpass.

It gives me ideas for silver clay jewellery, with this lovely sculptural shape pressed into a pendant. Or perhaps a lovely embroidery, with the buds made up of french knots.

These cornflowers have both appeared in my front garden. Who knew you could have white cornflowers? The only ones I’ve ever known have been blue. I sowed three mixed packets of wildflower seeds, and this is the only little patch that’s come up. A square foot of daisies and cornflowers amongst the thyme.

Hopefully they’ll seed themselves, so that next year we have a front garden full of these little gems.

Walk in the woods

Yesterday evening I received a text from Sarah at Skycarrots, asking whether we’d like to go for a walk. Of course the answer was yes, so the three of us grabbed our cameras and wandered into the woods.

The light was absolutely beautiful (when the sun tentatively appeared), and I found lots of places that made me think of ideas for my doll-related project.

My little camera behaved remarkably well, considering how much it dislikes working in low light. The photo below hasn’t been edited at all, and I’m really pleased with it.

(The two above have been edited in Lightroom, to make the light in the pictures a little closer to what we could see in real life.)

We also walked along to where the blackthorn trees are, and spotted lots of other fruit along the way. Blackberries, plums, cherries and sumac (a new one to me) are going to be plentiful this year, by the looks of things.

I have so many books now about foraging for edible and medicinal plants. I must start to keep a notebook of where these things are in our local area, so I can recognise them when I don’t have Sarah around to identify everything for me!

Shiny Shoes!

Yay, my shiny new Conker shoes have arrived!

They were delivered on Friday, while I was out at work. Paul very kindly went to pick them up from the sorting office for me while I was out at work on Saturday. He was somewhat startled to find that the postman knew me, and was not at all surprised to discover that the parcel contained shoes! He used to drive the delivery van for our area, so he got to know me very well in the days when I was collecting unusual Dr Martens from Ebay. Sometimes he used to wait on the doorstep while I opened my parcels, so he could see my unusual choice of shoes. I think he’d have been impressed by these!

I wore the shoes to work on Sunday, and they’re lovely! Not quite enough room for orthotics and handknit socks both at once, which tells me I should probably have ordered a 6F rather than a 6E. Conker offer amazing customer service and I could have sent them back to be stretched a little bit, but being the impatient sort I couldn’t resist wearing them straight away.

The lovely people at Conker are probably going to cry when they see this picture. I don’t think they’d take them back in this state! Yes, I knew it had been raining, and I should have put on a big pair of boots. But, new shoes!
(I know, I know. And yes, I have cleaned them now that the mud’s dry.)

Photo © Sarah Wainwright

I went for a walk with Sarah (Skycarrots), and we sketched and made rubbings and nibbled leaves and took pictures. Sarah took a picture of me, taking a picture of my shoes. She also took some lovely ones of a meadow full of cowslips, glowing as the light faded. We’re planning on making these walks a regular occurrence, so hopefully we’ll have full sketchbooks and photo albums to show you soon. It was lovely to go out with a friend, and find a bit of creative inspiration in our local area.

Grant Museum of Zoology

Somebody at the Grant Museum of Zoology definitely has a sense of humour. These four skeletons are perfectly placed to watch over the whole museum from their vantage point in the first floor gallery!

Those of a sensitive disposition should probably look away now, because the Grant Museum is filled with skeletons and things in jars. And when I say “filled”, I really mean it. I was reminded a little of the displays at Pitt Rivers, where the museum is as much about the origins of the collection itself as the individual objects in it.

There’s a whole cabinet full of brains from different animals, so that you can compare and contrast them. I just love the way the parts have been labelled with little slips of paper stuck directly into the specimen. This one is

Brain of “Dog” in median section to show the main convolutions and sulci.

(Sulci: pl. depression or fissure in the surface of the brain. The bumpy bits are gyri.)

I didn’t make a note of exactly which species this is, but it reminded me of Skycarrots‘ beautifully delicate photograms of Mermaids’ Purses that she found on the beach. When you find these washed up they’ve usually already hatched, so I find it really exciting to be able to see one from the inside.

The museum’s currently open Monday-Friday, 1-5pm. I didn’t stay long because I was on a trip to UCL with work, so I’m going again on Monday. This time with a better camera, and a friend who wants to see the baby manatee!

(Yes, this does mean there’ll be more pictures. Sorry, Lettice!)

Walk in the woods

I had to go out to the Post Office this morning, and it started off as a very misty day. I thought I might be able to take some photos of trees dramatically silhouetted against the sky, so I took the camera with me. As it turned out I’d brought along the macro lens, which isn’t so good for dramatic trees, so I took lots of photos of little details of things instead.

This was supposed to be a picture of a beautiful green shoot springing forth vigorously from the ground… but the plant was out of focus, so I cropped it out. Can you tell I have a lot to learn about the macro lens? Look at the lovely texture of these leaves though!

Still very misty, and quite dark as I walked into the woods. If you look closely (or click the picture to see a larger version on Flickr), you can see tiny dewdrops all over the petals.

Buried treasure! This acorn had been recently unearthed, but apparently deemed not good enough for eating.

I do like a good hole to peep through. This one made me want to go back to the doll that I never finished making. In my imagination, she looks great perched in this tree.

Look! It’s spring! Finally.

I must admit, I had real trouble getting the macro lens to focus where I wanted it to. Left on automatic, it was zooming in and out all over the place. This one was done using manual focus, but I’m so used to using the big screen on the back of my point and shoot camera that I find the viewfinder too tiny to see through properly. (That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.)

Sometimes things worked out pretty nicely though – I didn’t even see the tiny dewdrop on the end of the crocus leaf until I looked at this image on the computer.

By the time I was heading back home it was a beautifully sunny morning. I must get out with the camera more often. It was so satisfying to take a very slow walk and really look at everything around me.

Unfortunately I underestimated how much mud I might bring back with me, otherwise I’d have worn my walking boots!

Feathers and Fur

Peregrine

I haven’t taken any bird photos for a while… but today was Paul’s birthday trip, which was a visit to Feathers and Fur, a local falconry centre. It’s a tiny place, inside a garden centre, and a friend had told us about a Groupon offer on their Hands On falconry sessions.

Willow, barn owl

We were incredibly lucky to have the entire two hour session to ourselves, and even though it’s apparently not the right time of year for falconry (the birds should be out hunting and getting fat), everyone behaved beautifully.

Sadie was really friendly and taught us lots of things about the birds, their environment, and how she raises and looks after them. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and we laughed for most of the session. It turns out that watching a barn own swallow his lunch whole is somewhat inelegant, but absolutely hilarious!

Kestrel

I used the 70mm macro lens this time, and I’m really pleased with the photos I managed to take. I went for portraits rather than action pictures (Paul has some gorgeous ones of the owls in flight), and am thrilled with the detail on the image below. The snow made the light a bit weird and I was worried about the photos being over-exposed, so I dropped the ISO down to 400. I think that was a mistake, as some of the images are darker than I’d like, but I definitely had a higher success rate than I have in the past!

Billie Jean, eagle owl

You can see the rest of my photos over on Flickr. If you’re feeling sensitive, one of them’s a bit gruesome (the aforementioned barn owl lunch), but hey, everybody needs to eat.

We’ll definitely be going back and booking another session – probably a dedicated photography one next time. Sadie took some great shots with Paul’s camera, and understands how to position you to get the pictures you want. Although it’s always nice to have the opportunity to have the birds fly to you, so another session like the one we had today would be great.

(Note to self: No, you can’t have a barn owl. Really.)

Category: nature

An old lady and a wet rabbit.

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Blue Print

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Leaf rubbings on silk

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So much for summer

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Summer Walk

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Walk in the woods

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Shiny Shoes!

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Grant Museum of Zoology

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Walk in the woods

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Feathers and Fur

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