Before this morning’s thaw.
Frosty
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Category Archives: Nature
Karma chameleon
Red, gold and green. Sprung back to autumn!
Butterflies and moths
I adore the colours and the crispness of autumn but just for today, I’d happily be transported back to a hot, brightly coloured summer’s day.
Manx Loaghtan
Gullible’s Travels : The Great Black-backed Gull
It was the dead man’s chalk line coloured in with black marker pen, gliding gracefully over the water that initially caught my eye.
Curiosity kicked in and my research assistant Molly and I set out to discover more about this creature. It transpires it’s the world’s largest gull, a Great Black-backed Gull. Large billed, heavily built, huge wingspan, bold and ferociously predatory.
Molly aka Elvis, the Budda, Chubsy.
Its usual stomping ground is around the harbour, along the shoreline or sheltering on the craggy headland. I’ve been watching and photographing this bird for a few weeks now and it always seems to have a dominating presence, top of the hierarchy over the other Gulls, the Godfather, the Big Cheese, first in the pecking order.
Preening time in the fresh water running from the river into the sea.
A juvenile showing off its broad wingspan
The GBBG is similar to the Lesser Black-backed Gull but is bigger and has pale pink legs as opposed to the yellow legs of the Lesser Black-backed Gull. The red spot on the beak appears smudged like the Tasmanian Devil’s mother’s lipstick.
All natural ingredients
I find the colours, shapes and textures in nature to be quite beautiful and serene. These photographs were all taken over the past few months in Laxey, except the cormorant photograph which I took in Peel harbour.
Chough’s flamenco at Spanish Head
Yesterday delivered glorious weather here in the Isle of Man but this was just one bank holiday weekend sunny day, sandwiched in-between Saturday and today where it rained hard all day. We took the opportunity to explore down the south of the island and visited Spanish Head, overlooking the Calf of Man, the Chasms and Chicken Rock. The choughs were out in their numbers and they danced above us with their loud distinctive “pee-yaa” calls.
The impressive purple heather covers most of the rocky landscape The footpath overlooks Cronk Karran, a Neolithical stone circle which is either a burial site or a hut circle.
Vertical Limit
The fearless death-defying mountain goats appear in a flock on the Laxey hillside a few times during the year. The pathway gets quite busy with walkers but the goats just keep a low profile and maintain a close distance to their flock. Sometimes there are a couple of stags keeping watch at the top of the hill.
Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?
The meadow at Ballanette wetlands is often bursting with butterflies and moths during this time of the year. My preferred is the six-spot burnet moth that I’ve been trying to capture clearly in a photograph. These photographs aren’t as sharp as I’d hoped but I was captivated by the tiny, almost invisible grasshopper balanced on a leaf. It could be heard but not seen at the time so I was pleased to see it appear in my image.
Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered…
These are a few photographs I took recently at sunrise on Laxey shore.
Let the great wheel spin 