Showing posts with label snake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snake. Show all posts

Monday, 4 February 2013

Elusive bitterns

When we were in Australia, one of the pictures I took was this one. Just leaves under a multi stemmed (rooted?) tree you might think.


Having arrived back in the UK the pictures were perused  in more detail and we were amazed to find that a snake had been lurking in the leaves that I had been nonchalantly thrashing around in!






It was while we were wandering in Leighton Moss at the weekend that Q remembered this wild life spotting technique and wondered if we could apply it to our (so far) totally ineffectual efforts to actually see one of the reserve's famous inhabitants, the bittern. That we have failed to see a lot more of the reserve's inhabitants seems insignificant in comparison to our lack of tick against the bittern box.

So ... the idea was that we take LOTS of pictures of the bittern's natural habitat (reeds, reeds and more reeds) and then come home and scrutinise the results for that give-away profile.


Hmmm. it doesn't seem to have worked, or else we are not looking closely enough.  That said, we did as always have a great time.









Monday, 23 January 2012

Fluttering by

Having got rather cold wandering round the park we decided to visit the butterfly house.



I've done a bit of Googling and have identified this as a Glasswing butterfly. Aptly named, its wings are quite transparent as it does not have the colour giving scales of other butterflies and moths. The advantage of this is that it makes it hard to follow as it flits about.






An Owl butterfly; as well as the eye spots, this also seems to have snake mimicry. How did this all evolve?