Grasshoppers

These pictures are all of grasshoppers. 

You can tell they are grasshoppers because they have short antennae and we found them during the day. 

Grasshoppers are herbivorous.

They make their noise by rubbing their hindleg against their forewing.

More Butterflies

The butterflies seem to be enjoying the sunshine. They like our Buddleia in the back garden which can be covered with at least 20 butterflies.
The Peacock butterflies are happy to feed, but the Tortoiseshell butterflies spent a lot of time chasing the other types of butterflies away.

Small Tortoiseshell on its favourite garden plant

Comma butterfly on Buddleia

Brimstone Butterfly on Sweetpeas

One hour of Butterfly watching

Now the school holidays have started I have hours of spare time to film wildlife.

This morning I went on a dog walk for 1 hour, while taking photos of Butterflies

Meadow Brown

Gatekeeper or Hedge Brown

The Meadow brown and the Gatekeeper both like bramble bushes. On each bramble bush there were about 20 of these butterflies.

Meadow Brown

Meadow Brown on a thistle

Peacock

The Peacock butterfly likes the buddleia in our garden. This bush is sometimes called the butterfly bush.

Peacock

Large White

Fritillary

Ringlet

The Ringlet butterfly likes thistles and brambles on sunny woodland paths.

Small Tortoiseshell

Log Cabin weekend away - Dragonflies and damselflies

The plants around the edge of the lake were covered with Common Blue Damselflies.

There were also very large Dragonflies

Broad-bodied Chaser

Log cabin weekend away - Birds on the lake

There were a lot of different birds on the lake, such as Kingfishers, Heron's, gulls and Ducks.

My mum and I sat for ages on the raft at the side of the lake taking photos of the different birds.

Cormorant

Heron

Mute Swans

Oystercatcher and Common Tern

By the end of the weekend we managed to hand feed this swan

Common Tern's

Not sure what type of Duck this is

Oystercatcher

Lapwing

Log cabin weekend away - fox

While out rowing on the lake we found a dead Pike, we decided we would put out the trail camera over night to see if the otter would come and take it.
The otter didn't but something else did.

Log Cabin weekend away - The Lake and its fish

We have just come back from a weekend away at a log cabin in Cirencester.

The log cabin is on a lake and has a huge amount of wildlife. It takes 40 minutes to walk around the lake.

The lake is 100 acres big.
In the lake there are lots of fish including Pike, Perch, Roach, Carp and Tench.
Every evening as the sun set we saw an otter out in the lake, but we couldn't get a photo of it because it was too quick.

Bird Bath

The water left after we watered some plants in our garden was used by a Dunnock for a welcome bath.

Water birds

 We took the dogs down to the lake for a cold down. It has been 30 degrees this week.

There were lots of Great Crested Grebes on the lake. Some had babies and some others were trying to  defend their territory from other Grebes

Grebe trying to scare another Grebe away

We saw the same Oyster catcher as last week, but couldn't get a photo of it.

We saw swans

A black headed gull

And this small bird, which we think is a young willow warbler

It took ages to take a picture of a dragon fly

As the sun set loads of Cockchafer bugs came out. They are sometimes called May Bugs or Billy witches.
They were everywhere, we hid in the car, you could hear then banging into the car roof.

Cockchafer's