Category: insects

Birlin’ round Stirling – 13 August 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Scamp wanted to go to Stirling today, but couldn’t remember why!

Spoke to Hazy in the morning and found out about Neil forgetting his passport for travelling to Cologne and having to get his dad to drive with it to the airport. Silly boy!

We didn’t get as far as Cologne, we drove through the rain to Stirling and managed to find a parking space in the Waitrose carpark. Others weren’t so lucky. We walked in to Stirling proper because Scamp thought I need a new shirt. M&S was a disappointment in the Mens department. Very few shirts, in fact, very few of anything. Slaters on the other hand is unassuming from the outside. When you go in you’re met with a steep stair taking you up to the shop. Suits, shirts, shoes, jackets and jumpers all for men! No women’s department. Refreshing!

We stopped for coffee and a bite to eat in Caffe Nero before we went back to Slaters. I did get a shirt I liked. I haven’t tried it for size yet, but even if it doesn’t fit, I know I can exchange it for a better fitting one in any of their shops.

Then it was back to Waitrose for The Messages and as usual we came home with a lot more than we intended, but really, we expected that, it’s what usually happens. The drive home was again through the rain showers and the gathering wind.  Then when we got to Cumbersheugh the rain dried up, but not for long.  Soon the rain was hitting the window again  However, I managed to time a walk round St Mo’s well for a change and had a walk, got some photos and was back home in the dry. It’s not often I manage that.

PoD was a drone fly taking off from a Knapweed flower. Just a ‘lucky’ capture.

That was about all the excitement we could manage today. Better weather is promised by the weather fairies for tomorrow. If it appears we may go out somewhere.

 

Gardening – 11 August 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Actually it was Scamp who was doing most of the gardening on this beautiful sunny day.

I think my contribution could be better described as “pottering”.

While Scamp was cutting the front grass and moving all the pots around herself because she knows exactly where they go and in which direction they face, while I’ll just plonk them in a spot with the same shape as the shape of the pot base. Unfortunately that doesn’t work with circular pots which have two axes of symmetry. I’ve given up offering to help, because I know it will be refused.

Anyway, while the cutting was going on, I was in the back garden photographing butterflies on the Buddleia bush. The bush has been flowering for about a month now and not one butterfly has ventured near it. Today, after I’d cut away a lot of the flowers that were going to seed, not one, but two butterflies were climbing over each other to get to this nectar rich plant. A Small Tortoiseshell butterfly got PoD.

Earlier I was spraying the big splat of seagull diarrhoea that had been dropped from height on the passenger side of the car’s windscreen. A few of scooshes of screen wash and it started to melt away quite nicely, but it left unsightly white streaks all down the bonnet. The easiest thing to do was to wash the car, and that’s what I did, the old fashioned way with buckets of water lots of detergent and a sponge. Buffed it dryish with those green mitts and left it to dry completely in the sunshine.

Back to gardening again and I emptied out our final potato bag and collected 650g of Charlotte potatoes. Scamp’s and my favourite variety. Since I had the garden table set up and the big black plastic tray, I potted up five wee chilli seedlings that were looking a bit poorly after being planted some time in the spring. I blamed the compost Tesco sold us to plant them in. It looked more like floor sweepings than compost. Anyway, they’re in better stuff now. Good compost mixed with sharp sand and Perlite for drainage. Hope they enjoy the view from the bedroom window.

Spoke to Jamie tonight and heard about Simonne’s visit to the Olympics while Jamie worked from home and did some gardening. Good to hear that the green beans are growing and the cobs of corn are ripening hope the squirrels give them a chance this year.

Tomorrow I’m intending donating a thimbleful of blood for my three monthly checkup. Thunder showers are forecast for most of tomorrow.

Wild Weather – 9 August 2024

Posted on by Zogman

We woke to high winds with gusts in excess of 45mph. Wild weather.

Scamp was out to FitSteps in the morning. Wild winds couldn’t stop her doing her keep-fit exercises. I stayed home to read and to challenge myself with Wordle and Spelling Bee. After that my whole day turned. I just felt deflated and had no wish to do anything. I don’t know what caused it. It wasn’t my “Black Monkey” feeling, I was just totally fed up, and nothing Scamp did when she came home could lift me out of the hole I was in. Even worse, I couldn’t lift myself out either.

Eventually after lunch she Scamp she was going to walk to the shops and invited me to join her. I did exactly that and we walked and talked as we fought our way against the gale. On the way back, as sometimes happens she sent me on a walk round St Mo’s while she carried the messages back home.

I did feel a bit better when I got home although I had a sore back and a bit of a headache, but after a couple of hours snoozing on the sofa, I woke to sunshine, internal sunshine at least. The ‘ennui’ if that was what it was had gone. Maybe my snoring had frightened it away or maybe the Black Monkey had stayed in St Mo’s to pester someone else. I don’t know. All I can say is that I was much happier than I had been this morning and glad to be back home again.

While I was in St Mo’s I got a PoD which was, as you can see, a bee busy collecting pollen from some pink Knapweed flowers With those 45mph gusts today I wasn’t expecting to see many insects, but a bee’s gotta do what a bee’s gotta do, I suppose.

Dinner was Coconut Curry with Haddock. It’s one of the dishes Jamie & Simonne made during the holiday. Another thing that probably helped brighten my day with is cheerful colour scheme and spicy flavours. I recommend it to you once the recipe gets to Neil to be included in the Foodies Book.

The wind outside has eventually died down and we have peace in the garden for a while. Hoping to go dancing tomorrow, all being well.

Wet and Windy – 3 July 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Another day when the weather was wasn’t very like the July we all used to know.

Hurricanes in the Caribbean and temperatures almost in single figures at home. This isn’t at all like the summers we’ve been used to. What happened to summer? Did I blink and miss it? We’ve struggled through a wet, windy and cold winter, only to find at the end that it was at times, warmer than it is this summer. Personally I blame the government!

I did go out for a while in the afternoon hoping it would stay dry at least, but it didn’t. Luckily the trees are all in full leaf now, so I could shelter until the worst of it was past. I did get a couple of decent photos, despite the wind and the rain. Best of a reasonable lot was a photo of a Drone Fly, a kind of Hoverfly, feeding on the flowers of a Cow Parsley head. Probably not the prettiest of insects, but the new lens delivered a sharp image of it. There’s another of a ‘spider house’ on Flickr that gave the drone fly a run for its money.

That was about it for the day. Scamp didn’t even go out to prune her roses. It was that kind of day. I think we were both a bit tired after two hours of almost constant dancing yesterday.

We did a bit of digital tidying up. Moving photos from Scamp’s old computer on to a storage SSD and from there onto her new computer. Now it’s her job to complete the tagging of the photos before copying them to OneDrive. I suppose, grudgingly, I have to admit that there are things that OneDrive can do very efficiently.

Dinner tonight was the ready-roasted chicken we bought in Troon yesterday served with potatoes and cabbage. It made a decent meal and the chicken was lovely.

Tomorrow we may be meeting Isobel if we don’t get blown away, because there are more gusty winds predicted.

 

Plume Moth – 25 June 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It was another dull day, but a bit cooler than it has been of late.

Hazy phoned in the morning and told us about her interview and the way it was conducted. Totally different from the last one a couple of years ago. She seemed surprised at how relaxed it was, but I doubt she, herself, or Neil would be relaxed. I imagine the whole experience made her uneasy and she’d need a good few days to recover.

Scamp went out afterwards to look for a new phone. Not the iPhone that Hazy teased her with, but a sensible Android. First question Hazy asked later was “What colour did you get?” It’s a running joke in the family. Phones are so much smarter these days. It only took less than an hour for the phone to download everything from the old phone and install it in the new one. The most difficult thing was trying to get her Versa 4 watch to sync with the new phone, but then the Versa was made by Fitbit which has now been taken over by Google who haven’t made any improvements or updates in a couple of years. They just keep pushing their Pixel phone. That’s just how the world turns these days.

In the afternoon I went for a walk in St Mo’s, looking for insects to photograph, I did find a Plume Moth which became PoD. Plume moths don’t fold their wings, they roll them up when they land. They look quite otherworldly with their long spindly legs and those rolled up wings.
I’d intended to go for a longer walk into the woods, but the clouds that were surrounding the park were looking rain bearing, so I wandered home instead. It was getting dark, too although it was just about 5pm. The ISO reading on my camera was 12,800. Normally in June you would expect a reading of about 125. Quite a difference!

That was about it for another dull and at times very dull day. Watched Bake Off – The Professionals and saw the Scottish duo kicked out. A pity, but it was deserved.

Probably meeting Alex for a photowalk tomorrow.

Dancin’ – 12 June 2024

Posted on by Zogman

A lovely day as far as the weather was concerned, but we did very little.

Spoke to Hazy in the morning and heard about Neil’s recent illness which turned out not to be kidney stones, but the docs don’t seem to know exactly what it is. He’s been given another course of stronger antibiotics to see if that improves things. Hazel also filled us in about Penny’s cancerous tumour. It isn’t operable, but Hazy says the cat is eating better and that’s a good thing.

Scamp started working on a pile of ironing and I felt I should do something too, so I measured up the new mirror for our bedroom and managed to get it sitting level at the second attempt, then had to move it just a centimetre or so to get it into the best position in our congested floor space. It’s up now and steady. I do hope it doesn’t go bump in the night, with it being the 13th of June after midnight tonight!

Scamp was heading out tonight to a dance show in Denny High School. The only dancing there would be today, because Kirsty had cancelled tonight’s class due to lack of numbers. Jeanette was meant to pick Scamp up around 6pm, but when it came to 6.30pm and after Scamp had texted her, we decided that I should drive her there. We were just getting to the motorway when Scamp got a message from Jeanette to say that she’d forgotten all about it and would be with us in 20min. But by then we were on the motorway and heading east. We managed to get to the school just before 7pm, she got her ticket at the door and went away, relieved. I drove back home at a bit more sedate speed, enjoying the beginnings of lovely sunset.

I had been out in St Mo’s earlier looking for the evasive damselflies and dragonflies, but there were none to be seen. Lots of bees of various colours and patterns and I took what I could get. Bees, insects, wild flowers, I’m not fussy, well not very fussy. PoD went to a little red fly on top of what I believe is a Sorrel plant. “The pretty little Sorrel with the fly on the top!” Ask your mum if you don’t know what that’s all about. Something to do with Oklahoma, I believe.

Scamp did get a lift home from Jeanette who just made it to Denny in time to see the curtain go up. Glad they all managed to get a seat together.

Tomorrow looks wet. At least we won’t have to water the garden.

 

Computers, Bah! – 5 June 2024

Posted on by Zogman

This morning and some of the afternoon was spent wrestling with Outlook and Windows 11. Now I know why Alex rejected Outlook in favour of Yahoo.com.

It was a simple thing to do. Create a set of photos of the garden, reduce their size in Lightroom and link them to some descriptions, but Outlook didn’t seem to know what to do with the fourteen images. The old Window 10 mail app could do it and I’m sure Alex’s Yahoo could do it too, but I couldn’t find a way to get Outlook to download the photos into a folder. Eventually I found a clumsy solution. I did the resizing in Lightroom on my MacBook Pro and then copied the photos onto an SSD. Sneakernetted it (physically took the SSD) to Scamp’s new Windows 11 machine and plugged it in there, then dumped the folder of files into the on-board storage, avoiding OneDrive like the plague that it is. From there Scamp was able to link the text to the photos and send the file to Hazy, where it just worked! Hooray! We did it …eventually. Maybe some clever person can now explain what went wrong with saving fourteen photos that Outlook couldn’t separate, only download them as a fourteen photos chunk. The instructions said to find the down pointing arrow and click on it, but there wasn’t any $%&*@ arrow!!

Ahem. Now for the rest of the news.

We drove to Tesco to get some stuff for tonight’s dinner which was to be Cabbage, Bacon and Potatoes. Sounds boring, tastes great. Drove home, thankfully missing another rain shower. We had a few today. Heavy rain showers blown along on a cold north wind. Flaming June!?

I walked over to St Mo’s to get a few photos and found the bees were busy in a sheltered bit of the park, feeding on nectar from the Bramble flowers and collection pollen to pollenate other flowers in the process. That’s the way the world goes around. That’s where today’s PoD came from.

Dance class tonight was a bit shambolic. Disorganised and stop-start. Neither of us were really sure whether we were doing the units properly or not. I did take a few videos, so maybe they will make things clearer. Perhaps Kirsty was also having a bad day.

I’m booked for a photo walk with Alex tomorrow. Hope the rain stays off long enough for us to get some photos.

Quandry – 19 April 2024

Posted on by Zogman

Quandary: “a state of not being able to decide what to do about a situation in which you are involved”

We were in a quandary today. Should we go out for lunch or go for a walk. Eventually we came up with the elegant solution to do both, but not at the same time. But first Scamp went out to her Fitsteps class and I set about excising some useless parts of my 512GB SSD. It wasn’t a surgical gloves and a scalpel type of excision, just a heart in the mouth, digital one.

One of the nice things about third party software is that it allows you to search the hidden parts of a Mac that Apple don’t like you poking your nose into. The software I was using was Daisy Disk. A clever little program that shows you where all your junk is stored in your computer. It was only recently I discovered that you can search deeper in to the all the Ones and Zeros that hold Apple’s secrets. To do that you have to make a request to Apple, through Daisy Disk. Then you are given a code that will open up restricted areas on the drive. This isn’t the Dark Web, just a little bit of poking around where we shouldn’t be. The problem was that my 512GB SSD was almost full, because it had 150GB of Apple backups stuffed away in a corner, but with a bit of careful digging around, I could get rid of it and free up an additional 30% of space. That space was being used to produce a backup of the operating system that I didn’t know about until recently and didn’t need, as I do my own backups ever week. Apple, like Mickysoft are devious.

When Scamp came home, I had performed the surgery and the drive was looking healthy again. I’d suggested we go to Hamilton for a curry, but neither of us could be bothered driving there, so instead, at Scamp’s suggestion we went to Mango in Haggs. It’s an Indian and Italian restaurant where you can mix and match your starters and main courses between the two culinary areas. As it was, we both stuck to Indian today:

Vegetable Pakora and Vegetable Boona with Rice for Scamp
Chicken Pakora and Chicken Rogan Josh with Rice for me.
We had a plain Naan to share.

Most of the food was fine, but Scamp reckoned that her pakora was made with plain flour, not Garam Flour. And we both agreed that the naan bread tasted more like a flatbread. Foodies!

Instead of driving home, we took a wee single track road that led us down to the Forth & Clyde canal. Where we walked west towards Auchinstarry, but turned when we were at the first lock on the canal and walked back to the car. Lots to see today. A big bunch of yellow Celandine growing in the crotch of a tree and more on the ground. Some white Wood Anemone close by. I also saw and photographed a Dark-Edged Bee-Fly which I’ve never seen before in Scotland. Another sign of Global Warming perhaps? None of these got PoD. That went to a bunch of dandelions growing from the cobbles at the canal lock.

We drove home on a beautiful spring day with sunshine and blue skies, but with a cold wind from the east. I just knew that Scamp would be desperate to get back to get her grass cut. The first cut of the year. My job was to lift the heavy plant pots out of the way so she could strim behind them and then to replace the strimmer cord when it broke, before replacing the pots again.

Not a bad day. I really enjoyed the walk, but I think I’d go back to Hamilton rather than Mango next time, if only for the naan bread!

Tomorrow we may take the bus somewhere interesting.

 

Old friends – 14 January 2024

Posted on by Zogman

It was a cold start to a colder day.

Ice and frost welcomed us to the start of another winter day. Nobody seemed to want to go out and that included us. However, after lunch I did put my boots on and walked over to St Mo’s. Not surprisingly there wasn’t much change from yesterday, so I went for a walk in the woods and that’s where I found two old friends. Two sixteen spot ladybirds, each neatly tucked into two different crevices in a tree. I’m sure they hatch in the late summer or early autumn and hibernate through the winter months. Always the same variety with orange wing casing and white spots. Totally different from the ‘normal’ ladybirds we usually see with red wing cases and black spots. Usually I find them in groups of two or three, huddled together, but todays ones were each in their own little hollow. Maybe they weren’t talking to each other.

Two trees away I found a green shield bug. That’s a rare occurrence in winter. As far as I can tell, they hibernate in grasses and leaf litter during winter months, but this one was half way up a tree.

I walked back after that, happy that I’d managed to get something other than trees and reflections in the pond for a potential PoD. Then I found when I opened the computer that my reflection photo from a couple of days ago had been awarded “Explore” which is the Flickr equivalent of ‘going viral’. Suddenly the whole Flickr world wants to ‘like’ your photo and some folk comment on your photo. It’s kind of embarrassing, because it’s usually a run of the mill photo that gets the accolade. I have no idea who chooses the photo to get the award and I have no idea what formula they use. I just accept it and say thank you!

Dinner tonight was a rather strange M&S packet of DIY Fajitas. We heated up the chicken and veg packet in the microwave then did the same to the packet of tortillas spread the tortillas with the supplied tomato salsa and sour cream then put a layer of the chicken and veg mix on top before rolling them up. The kit made four fajitas, two each and although a bit messy and awkward to eat, they tasted ok, a bit spicy, but nothing too hot. Would we try them again? Maybe not. Not really very substantial and messy to make, although that might be down to my lack of fajita making skill.

Spoke to Jamie later and heard about the problems commuting to work while fields on either side are temporary ponds and how they are having to contend with the cold winds from the east while their roof is being replaced. I don’t envy them.

PoD was the green shield bug. Two images merged in a program called Affinity Photo. It’s what photogs call a Focus Stack. Too complicated to describe here and too boring for non-photogs.

We had a flurry of snow in the late afternoon and if it returns tomorrow, that might change our plans for driving to Larky to get Scamp’s glasses fixed.

Oh what a beautiful morning – 11 October 2023

Posted on by Zogman

And the makings of a beautiful day.

Scamp was out in the morning to have coffee with June. While she was out I found a subject for today’s Inktober prompt – “Wander”. I started work on it right away, drawing on a Seagate A4 sketchbook. I usually draw ideas to begin with in a cheap sketchbook, but have been caught out many times by working up a good sketch in them, then when I put a watercolour wash on them the paper soaks up the water, buckles and the sketch becomes a disaster area. Now I’ve learned to draw on decent quality paper that will hold the watercolour without falling apart. Yes, the paper is more expensive, but it saves a lot of swearing!

Lunch, when Scamp came in was, soup. Quite delicious soup. Then with the sun still shining I walked over to St Mo’s and found myself surrounded by dragonflies. Yesterday’s unseasonably warm weather coupled with today’s sunshine must have released a hatch of the insects. Mainly they were Common Darters with a few Black Darters too. I grabbed a few shots with the 85mm lens which performed really well, even if it didn’t allow me to get as close as a macro lens would. I also found a big clump of mushrooms that had appeared overnight. Again I think it was the weather than had encouraged them to sprout. This time it was the combination of warm weather and lots of rain, two things fungi thrive on. The mushrooms got PoD.

Back home Scamp was talking to her sister in Skye on the phone, but I didn’t hear much of the conversation because I was trying to scan in today’s sketch and post process the photos from the afternoon. We were going out to Kirsty’s dance class tonight, so I knew I had to get everything done as early as possible.

A photo of a tree beside the Luggie got ‘Explore’ on Flickr. I was quite impressed. It was almost OOC (Out Of Camera, meaning it had minimal processing). Second one in about a month!

Dinner tonight was a rather excellent fish ’n’ chips with beetroot. Not the best beetroot, but the fish made up for it. A lovely slice of cod!

There were only two couples for class tonight, but it was very useful. Plenty of room for dancing and also lots of tips from Kirsty about the little dance nuances I frequently forget. Lessons learned. She even got the chance to give us a quick and very short Quickstep routine to work on. Next week it’s Tango. Must remember a rose to hold in my clenched teeth!

Came home and opened the fridge door and the internal light went off. Oh No! Has the fridge been listening to us discussing replacing it? However, it was just the bulb that had blown. We’ll have to go out and source one tomorrow.

No other plans tomorrow. We’ll see what transpires.