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Tip. Looking Close...on Friday!
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I was delighted to find this orange tip settled with wings closed towards the end of my walk. It was in an area I do not usually visit or expect to see much.
The underside of this species is very different to other butterflies in Britain and makes the male orange tip very appealing in both ventral and dorsal views.
Orange-tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines) (female), Buchanan Castle Golf Course, Drymen. I don't know how this photo turned out sharp, as the stalk of grass was swaying gently in the breeze. Olympus's in-camera image stabilisation is definitely superior to my Nikon.
The hydrangeas in my backyard begin to bloom in early May and continue to bloom until early December. However, the colors of the flowers change little by little, first to white, then to bright pink, then to green, and finally red at the tips of the petals, ending their life with the arrival of winter.
I was lucky enough to take this with my iPhone while looking for a place to set up my DSLR. Ended up the only photo of the day. It is a common Orange Tip Butterfly native to the UK.
2020-09-07, Day 3
Snow clouds roll in over a glassy un-named lake that sits at the foot of a talus-decorated cirque down which we must descend, high in the trackless northern Wind River Range, Fitzpatrick Wilderness, Wyoming.
The descent to this lake marked an incontrovertible tipping point for us. If the weather brought snow, as it seemed increasingly likely to do, it would be impossible to climb back the way we had come with the gear we had on our backs. Above where I stand here are one or two narrow or difficult places that required some Class 3 scrambling, and we lacked both metal foot-traction and ice-axes to make it an option both plausible and safe once covered in (more) snow and ice. As we picked our way carefully down through patches of vegetation interspersed with bands of talus, we crossed paths with a weasel racing uphill with a fat pika in its mouth. Helluva day to be that pika; on the other hand, it's time for a weasel celebration party.
If one looks at this photo closely, it is apparent that there are two lakes, separated by a small bridge of land. Judging from the rocks we could see, we figured we might find a flat place to pitch a tent in the patch of trees at about 11 o'clock on the far shore of the near lake. We also hoped that we would be protected from the worst of any snow and wind that the clouds might deliver after nightfall.
We made beef and bean burritos with cheese and rehydrated salsa for dinner, and we brewed a hot cup of herbal tea. Before our repast was complete, the temperature began to drop, the light commenced to fade, and the first flakes floated down through the wind-battered trees and landed on our jackets. We cleaned up the pot, hung the food, and climbed into the down sleeping bags to stay warm. The snow began to drive into the tent fly as it got dark, and I watched pellets of corn snow repeatedly gather in a few flatter parts of the fly, then slide down the vestibule toward the ground once a certain critical mass was attained. The tent did seem to be protected from the worst of the wind but the thin canopy of trees was doing very little to shield us from the accumulating snow.
Not long after dark, the snow and wind were joined by near simultaneous exclamations of thunder and lightning. The inside of the tent lit up like bright electric day, and enough detail could be made out of the sky immediately above us that it seemed as if we were on the inside of a snow-globe. Up to this very moment, I had never camped at the very edge of timberline in a high-elevation cirque in the middle of a full-on raging winter storm, with no trail anywhere close-by, and the surrounding talus now getting buried in who-knew-how-many inches of snow and ice. I thought somewhat academically that rest might be a good idea, but it proved difficult to relax. Every time I rolled over and glanced up at the tent fly, I noticed the weight of accumulating snow, and I hit the nylon to keep the vestibules on either side of the tent from collapsing. I have a two-person MSR backpacking tent that weighs just over 3 pounds (1.4 kg), including poles and stakes. It is a fabulous, light-weight, 3-season tent, and the conditions outside could only properly be described as that other, most unwelcome fourth season.
Wearing all of our clothing, and wrapped tightly in the down sleeping bags to try and retain as much warmth as possible, I can report that we were not downright cold. As the hours slowly passed, we noticed a change to the tenor of the storm. What was corn snow gave way to gusts of snow flakes complemented with a peppering of larger pea-sized ice particles. These hailstones irregularly collided with the aluminum poles of the tent frame, and we were treated to the relatively frequent pinging sound of the ice as it danced merrily off our stretched nylon bubble.
The only way out of this place in the morning would be to navigate the talus and attempt to find the nearest trail. The maps we consulted a month or so earlier when we identified bail-out points suggested that would be a distance of a little over 2 miles (3.2 km), with a descent of 1,000 feet (300 m) through what we surmised would be talus of some size, interspersed with bands of spruce forest and copious downed logs that would be slippery with snow and ice. Our initial assumption that the storm would likely bring only a few early-season inches to the Wind Rivers was clearly incorrect, and we would now pay whatever price the wilderness required to return to the warmth and comfort of the vehicle, which was over 20 miles (32 km) and one 11,000 foot (3,350 m) pass away from where we huddled. Apparently, getting older does not necessarily guarantee that one accrues any real wisdom.
White tip reef sharks grow to about 2.5m and are harmless to humans but not so to reef fish. They are especially very thorough hunters by night.
GBR FNQ
To read our story about Lihou Reef Atoll click
Last post for a while, going away.
Thanks to you all for your visits faves and comments.
Will fight the battle to catch up when i return.
Warmest wishes
David
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shot with an olympus om-d e-m10 mark iii and a panasonic 20mm f/1.7 mark ii lens
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my thoughts on this camera:
aarondesigns.org/Olympus-OMD-EM10-markiii-long-term-review/
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First shot of the orange tip from the other evening before moving in closer, Kingcombe meadows, Dorset.
Blue Tit, Cyanistes caeruleus
Thank you to all that take the time to look at my photographs and comment or like them. It really is appreciated. To see more, follow my blog or get post-processing tips please visit www.kevinagar.uk
On 7th December 2024, Orenstein & Koppel 0-8-0 tank '11' (Works No.13216 built in 1940) of the 750mm gauge Mansfelder Bergwerksbahn, Klostermansfeld, heads away from Hettstedt for Benndorf skirting the former mine's shale tip. Formerly built to transport copper slate, coal and coke, the railway had a route network of 95 km in its heyday. After the exhaustion of the deposits, the railway was dismantled. Today, museum traffic with steam and diesel locomotives still takes place on 11.8 km of the original system.
© Gordon Edgar - All rights reserved. Please do not use my images without my explicit permission
Orange-tip butterfly, one of the early spring butterflies in my garden in West Yorkshire, UK. I like this shot as you can see both sides of the wing. Taken in my garden....
April 2020