A 52 week photo project interspersed with photos from the past 40 years.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire, England in the 1980s. I visited the Crewe Steam Rally early on Sunday morning before there was many people about. The exhibitors with machinery were busy firing up the boilers or giving the brass work a final polish.
This traction engine has just had the firebox lit judging by the smoke coming out of the smokestack.
This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is Creepy Crawlies.
First, let me say that I don’t regard these Common Rough Woodlice (Porcellio scaber) as creepy crawlies. The Woodlouse family is quite interesting, they’re Crustaceans, like Lobsters and Crabs, although most species live on land. They congregate in damp places to avoid drying out.
These Common Rough Woodlice were photographed in Cheshire, England in the 1980s. Rather bizarrely I remembered the scientific name for them, presumably from captioning the photos all those years ago. A couple of days ago I met someone I used to work with and I can’t remember their name.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire in the 1980s. The juvenile Eurasian Blue Tit is feeding on a Poppy seed head.
The photo is interesting for a couple of reasons. The juvenile Blue Tit is ringed. I did some research and the closest ringing location I could find was three miles away in a straight line. Which means that this juvenile has already travelled some distance from where it was ringed. Being a juvenile it could have been ringed when it was still in the nestbox.
Also interesting is that the bird is feeding on Poppy seeds after pecking a hole in the seed head. I have seen adult Blue Tits feeding this way. So did the juvenile bird learn this behavior by watching an adult or is it instinctive behavior to peck open seed heads?
A Common Frog amongst Pondweed in a garden pond.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire, England in the late 1980s. The pond was constructed for wildlife and within a year Common Frogs were spawning in it and there was a variety of insects living on or in the water. Some of the Common Frogs got so used to people they would stay on the surface of the pond rather than diving under the water.
Throwback Thursday travels back to Cheshire in the late 1980s. Friends had a Red Fox hunting in the hay field behind their house. So I parked in their driveway and stuck my telephoto out of the vehicle window for a few evenings.
Some time later the photo was used in a field guide to garden wildlife despite the photo fairly obviously not being taken in a garden.
This week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge is ‘Beautiful Spirits of the Natural World.’
I was considering various nature images, completely forgetting a series of photos from the mid 1980s. It was only when checking out a different image I was considering that I remembered the series. I was photographing a variety of nature subjects using Scotch Chrome 1000 slide film for its grain in combination with soft focus or diffusion filters.
The photo shows a Brimstone Butterfly feeding on Buddleia taken using a soft focus filter. Buddleia is also known as the Butterfly Bush.
