My Garden Residents - Not only spiders!

My last couple of evenings have been spent preparing a wildlife photography presentation for next Monday. The New Milton U3A have kindly invited me back for a second time, so hopefully were not too bored by my local wildlife talk a few months ago!

My main reason for going into the garden was to take a short video showing how I get the big spiders in our Leylandeii trees to pose, but of course I couldn't resist a few stills of my resident monster and a few other residents.

Sorry about the copyright symbol now showing on my pics, I am soon going to have a dedicated web site and want to protect my work!

This is my favourite resident at the moment. She always comes when called! All of the pictures are a little bit hazy. That is because she is a type of Orb Web Spider and it is impossible to photograph her without having bits of the web in the way!

She Is quite impressive as you can see, and just look at the fangs. You can also see a tiny bug just to the right of her front leg! Bet it is keeping VERY still!

There is a close up just for good measure. Her left fang is very clear here. She is just one of half a dozen that are in a good position to 'come out and play', but the others are all only about 1/4 of her size. (At the moment!).

For all you Hammer Horror fans out there, here is a black and white pic. I really like shots in this medium. It works well with old buildings and other structures as well as certain animals, but that is another topic!

Just to show that my obsession is not only limited to spiders, I also wandered around snapping other creatures as well, as I always do.

We are very lucky in having a huge number of bees gracing our garden. As you walk along it you can hear a constant buzzing in the background! We have also noticed several going into the little 'Bee House' we installed last year, so hopefully we now have our own colony!

I took this one purely by chance, just saw a tiny bug totally immersed in his work, so took the snap. I am really pleased with this one.

I am generally better at showing off the creatures than producing artistic compositions, so maybe I shouldn't admit that I was concentrating on the bee and was only lucky that the whole shot worked!

While I was peering into the undergrouth, this beautiful Comma butterfly was fluttering around all over the place and stopped several times to pose for me. The one above was on the garden path.

Then she settled on the corner of our shed to catch the sun!

Then she closed up her wings. Always amazes me how they change from being stunning to being drab and ugly in the blink of an eye!

Ok, not EVERYTHING I photograph is an animal! The flowers in the garden are at their best right now.

And finally, our new blackcurrant bushes are starting to bear fruit! We will only get a few mouthfulls this year, but it is a start!

That's all for the moment. Please leave comments, they are always welcome!