Sunday 12 July 2009

Magnified marvels



We have jays here, noisy but beautiful. They regularly leave the odd feather from their sky-blue shoulder marks and here's one, designed to cheer up an otherwise rather dull moth. Actually that's not wholly fair, when you look closely at the patterning on the latter's wings. But I'm afraid they don't compare with the feather, not remotely. Still, the moth, a Small Angle Shades, doesn't make those raucous yells which have got the jay its bad name. It sat quietly under an eggbox all morning and actually joined us for lunch which we had outside. I don't usually have an assistant for my early morning trap inspections, so it was good to have Penny hold the magnifying glass while I took the exciting experimental shot below. The glass was a silver wedding present from our friends the Boyd family of Farnham, so many thanks to them cos we use it a lot. The SAS woke up during the photo shoot and flew away before coffee.

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