Nick: decided to buy a Canon Powershot SX70 HS. I have a couple of Canon Powershot SX50 HS. I had a third but it fell out of the car and I drove over it when it was in a puddle. It's a tough camera but even so that stress was too much for it - the screen broke. Good camera and I'm sure the 70 is eve...

Finally on 21st April perhaps my latest every 'first sighting' of the year
Cawdor, GV White and small Tortoiseshell plus a possible distant fly-by Orange Tip.

Jack

Thread title:

Differences between males and females?

Easy. Males never need persuading. Females often do

Jack

For about ten years, I provided weather forecast specifically for gliding, including for major competitions.  I used various sources, some quite technical, such as atmospheric 'soundings'.  I will modestly say that my forecasts were well received. Computer forecasting has now taken over. However, I ...

Dave: In conversation with Bugboy the other day, we found we had both come to the same conclusion that the species (at least down here in the south) was becoming more orange and less pale buff than it used to be. In the 1970s, work often meant I had some spare time in the Channel Islands. Speckled W...

I have some thoughts but hardly a hypothesis. First emergences - and I'm not talking about species that hibernate as adults - have become very much earlier in my almost 80 years of butterflying.  For example, Orange Tip is now seen by the end of March.  In my younger days, it was end of April if I w...

Chris L: The thought of gliding and not being able to stay airborne brought on mild palpitations for me. Gliders are always descending through the air.  You need to find air that is going up faster than the glider's descent.  Racing pilots look for the strongest thermals (or other sources of 'lift'...

I have told this one before but perhaps worth repeating. I was flying in a gliding competition and unable to stay airborne.  I landed at Martlesham Heath disused airfield near Ipswich and had my first ever meeting with Essex Skippers. Another gliding adventure was somewhere near Silverstone.   Woodl...

Still no butterflies up here yet.  However, in anticipation, my box of Orange Tip chrysalises came out of the fridge (where they had spent the winter) on 6th April and are now warming up.  They are still in the box - in a shady part of the garden.  I say "warming up".  At just 8C, I suspec...

The weather up here (Nairn on the Moray Firth) has been diabolical for the past three days.  Temperature has hardly varied day and night, being 4C to 6C (currently, 3rd April at 1630 BST is 4 degrees).  It's been overcast, a keen wind and almost continual drizzle, sometimes with much heavier bursts ...

You lucky people in the south.  Up here it's been wet and dull. So some nostalgia reminds me that there used to be butterflies. I go back to 1947 & 1948, then aged eight / nine.  I lived on the outskirts of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk on a road that house building had begun in the late 1930s but was...

Also a Twatt on Orkney. On my last visit to the island, the Twatt Church was for sale.

Jack

I was once in a Beechwood near Cambridge looking for the reported Bramblings.  It was a cold, drizzly winter's day and I wore a raincoat.  A woman asked me: "where is your dog?"  I suppose that a 60 something man wearing a flasher's mac might have looked suspicious, especially without the ...

Jack, Tolman states: Recorded from Malta in 1963. Is that your sighting? Yes, but a very iffy sighting as I explained. I recall that it was on Buddleia, a somewhat unusual plant for Malta. I have looked at my flying log books to see if I can find clues where else I might have been but no joy. Butte...

I had a very strange experience with Catopsilia florella, the African migrant. This is an extraordinary story. In my Air Force days, I used to fly regularly to Malta where I sometimes had free time.  But I also went to many other places such as Gibraltar and Cyprus. In the early 1960s I caught (by h...

I'm not into Smart Phones - far too technical for me and moreover a tiny screen. But, I know that the cameras in many phones are superb. This taken yesterday over Scotland by my daughter from an Airbus co-pilot's seat. Click on image to see full size. 2024-02-25-polly-Highlands-LochEricht.jpg Is it ...

This is very serious in The Broads:

https://www.greatyarmouthmercury.co.uk/ ... -warnings/

Jack

I have always struggled to get photos of Humming-bird Hawkmoths, so little wrong with the pictures except that the moth is in silhouette.

But nothing that PhotoShop can't help with. This is a very quickly done edit to your picture.
Jack

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68278444 "right to roam" campaigners say that, by combining Natural England's CRoW Act mapping with local authority public rights of way maps, they have identified hundreds of fragmented areas of open country which do not have footpaths connec...

Dr. Fergus McDreich was a cantankerous man as befits his surname.* * For those unfamiliar with Scottish jargon, 'driech' (usually applied to the weather) means cold, damp, foggy, dull, wet - in general miserable. Mc.Dreich’s specialisation was proctology as that was the only ‘opening’ available to h...