ShareMondays2019 – What’s The Difference Between A Weasel And A Stoat?

ShareMondays2019 – What’s The Difference Between A Weasel And A Stoat?

A weasel is weaselly recognised but a stoat is stoatally different! Boom Boom!

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist a bad Christmas cracker joke. This is the first WILD weasel I have ever managed to catch on camera! What a way to celebrate the festive season. I know it’s a weasel, not for the aforementioned reason, but because it’s REALLY small and the tail is only about 3cm long, with no black bushy tip! I only actually caught very brief glimpses of the tail as they’re also REALLY, REALLY fast. My photos with the full body and tail are unintentionally motion blurred!

Anyway, wishing everyone a fun and joyful festive season, whatever and however you might celebrate! Here are the festive feathered friends that I went to photograph, who actually alerted me to the presence of the Wisley Weasel. A redwing in a cherry tree and rockin’ robin!

ShareMondays2019 – Interstellar

ShareMondays2019 – Interstellar

I’m actually judging ShareMondays this week so my image is only being entered into the Fotospeed challenge this week. I’m still keeping the ShareMondays title up there though as this piece was created very much in the spirit of our Twitter togs challenge. It’s really all about connecting photographers, generating discussion and inspiration. It’s for the love of art!

I spent a fantastic day with my godchild, Quinn, last week, sharing our love of creativity and photographic art. They’re currently doing an art project at school based on patterns in nature. It’s something I know we’ll explore more at RHS Wisley Gardens soon, but I thought we could try a “rainy day” project and create our own, imagined, cosmic patterns. For our subject we used milk, cornflower, food colouring, inks and a couple of straws to create the swirling patterns we wanted.

Our results really spoke to the science-fiction fan in me and I decided to take a couple of the base images a step further with two 3D rendered spheres as planets. I added some light effects in overlays for stars and bands of particles spiralling out from the planets. This one’s for you Quinn! Keep creating, keep seeing the cosmically-beautiful in the small and simple things x

ShareMondays2019 – Winter Tree Decorations

ShareMondays2019 – Winter Tree Decorations

I managed to get out of the house last Thursday to visit some of my favourite tree decorations, at RHS Wisley Gardens, fieldfares and redwings! These two birds are members of the Thrush family that fly south from Scandinavia, to overwinter in the UK and other parts of southern Europe. They won’t take long to strip the cherry trees bare of these sweet treats! It’s a spectacle I love seeing every year. They are so busy feeding that I can get just a little bit closer to them than in some other areas where they are gathered.

ShareMondays2019 – Lazy Days

ShareMondays2019 – Lazy Days

I’ve been out of action for two weeks now and I think our Juno is as bored of it all as I am! The antibiotics did improve my throat infection and I finally have my voice back. I only started the correct treatment for the inner ear infection last Thursday though so I’m still a little bit off balance. Hopefully things will improve soon and I’ll be back out there again!