Seaweed

ABC this week is bought to you by the letter S

Living on an island I am surrounded by S's. Everything from sea to seagulls to saltwater to sailboats....even my favourite pub is s The Swan, which of course leads me nicely onto the non alcoholic swans of the bird variety around these parts as another S. Anything of course could be a shadow shot, fail safe sunrise and sunset I always have waiting to upload for rainy days, but I went with this arty farty little seaweed image. Quite monstrous looking thing it is too! I went with black and white for the textures and a close up on the more hideous aspects. Not exactly the prettiest image, but this is what we really get washed up on our shores, along with all manner of crap from buckets to bicycle wheels. Some days the whole beach seemed to be covered in this stuff above until the tide washes it back out again. Yuk! Not a fan. I like my beaches seaweed free and walkable for dogs without getting snarled up in the alien looking stuff.


Smoaghan is a Manx word for seaweed and though there are more, many more that is the only one beginning with S. I can think of a very foul English word for the stuff which I shall refrain from typing though!


For other s's around the world click here

ONE BUTTERFLY LEFT- CRITTERS

Painted lady takes a break

Critters

Well that was either a very pretentious title, a really great pun or a misquote of one of my fav ipod albums. All three. Don't worry I am not about to break into a tedious Haiku with the sound of one hand clapping. Not that they are tedious ( oh ok actually a lot are) it's just everyone now thinks they can write one and frankly my dears, well they can't. I think you know what I mean. What we do have though are more butterflies. More of those painted ladies to be exact. Unlike the one last week I showed you looking onto half closed wings, here you can see the overwing and the underside of the wing. You can see the spotting and colouring better too. So I know what the butterfly is but not a clue on the plant. Last week the plant was a butterfly on a buddleja (butterfly bush to some of you) but this week I haven't a clue. I know I can rely on you as you comment to clarify what wild thing it is. It's in the meadow I showed last week last week, dry grassy area if that helps for identification purposes. To check out about the painted lady in more detail above click here

For more butterfly images on wild plants click the words below.


Buddleja Buddies
Red Admiral

Stoned Butterfly

For other critters of all shapes and sizes check out Misty Dawn's den and Camera Critters which is one year old today. As spring has sprung and the nights are getting lighter and longer expect to see more butterflies, especially painted lady ones. I did warn you there would be more of these butterflies. If you see a post for Big Fat Hairy Bikers though that will not be a species of butterfly but the real thing. If you see a post for Big Fat Hairy Bikers and Painted Ladies... you are on a very different blog to this one! To understand that paragraph from last week you really need to know what the other kinda painted lady is. No you find out for that info for yourself.

Now go flutterby some other critters.

foj

IT'S SNOWTIME. COME WALK WITH ME?

Spring has sprung....snow!

Finally it happened we got us some of that there darned snow you folks out there have had and not just a dusting on the mountain. Actually it was really weird. It snowed for a couple of hours Tuesday night, started to settle getting that lovely white blanket on the ground then guess what happened? It started raining washing most of it away. Noooooooooo! Some has survived though. Clumps of snow dotted about the garden and round the town. Where would snow be then in Ramsey that hadn't washed away? A conundrum. Ah the answer would be the image above. Care to walk with me? I made you an offer you can't refuse by the way.


Well now where are we? No it's not the park or the nature reserve. It's not one of the Glens either or the woodland leading off from the arches image I've shown you. We are still in Ramsey though. We are just starting out on Claughbane Walk. From where I've taken the image from is just in off the main road leading out to Douglas. To the right of the image looks onto one of the housing estates looking down onto the town. To the left leads you into woodlands and Glens but we'll discover those another day. Back to the walk. Don't know how well you can see this bit the path has a very slight incline down into the town. Eventually we would take a slight right as the path meanders passing fields and woods on the left hand side and hedges and the housing estate on the right. It is another haven for wildlife with sparrows nestling in barns and longtails(rats) rabbits scurrying about, hedgehogs not scurrying and of course an abundance of butterflies in summer. The walk takes as long or as little as you make it, but if you have a camera with you then don't plan to hurry. Eventually you will get to town. If you want to see where you will eventually arrive at your destination( a clue) then click here.


Just a quick snapshot with the point and shoot, no smartypants camera work today. Had to make sure you got a least one image of the phenomena will call snow that has eluded these parts. As the weather gets better we'll have a proper walk in this area and see what we shall find. Might even be those elusive Manx Fairies

Babooshka ramsey daily photo http://dailyphotoisleofman.blogspot.com/