Froggy!

When we moved into this house last year we had a bit of a wilderness at the bottom of the back garden with all kinds of wildlife living amongst it. Over the year we've cleared out and tidied up the garden and we were just talking about whether or not we'd see any frogs or hedgehogs again this year and what a shame it would be if they'd all moved out.

The next day whilst mowing the lawn Nathan almost ran over this little thing! We popped it into the padding pool to keep it safe whilst cutting the grass and of course I took the opportunity to take pictures....

It seems our fears of having no little creatures at the bottom of the garden was unnecessary!

Woodland Wildlife - Warning, it's a bit grim!

In our recent woodland walks the children have shown a great fascination not only for live bunnies and birds, but dead ones. On one particular walk they started looking for them and wanted me to take pictures...

Then then endless questions and enthusiasms about death begin:

'How did it die, is it old?'

'Will I die? Will you die? When will we die mummy?..... Not until we're really old?'

'Why's the baby bird dead? Where is its mummy?'

'Who killed it? Did a fox get it, or a dog, or a farmer with a gun!?'

'I bet a fox got it and ripped it's head off!'

'Where is it's head?' *Run off looking*

'Oh I've found it mummy it's here!'

They were particularly excited when they found the dead rambler.....

Buttercups in Bungay

We've been camping this weekend. The weather was very good to us with only a little rain one night. We stayed in the same field last year and I decided that I wanted to make sure I got at least one nice photo of the girls in the meadow surrounded by buttercups.

Little Squish was rather uncooperative and at one point she was pushing the others out of the way because not only did she not want me to take *her* photo, she didn't want me to take a picture of "nobody" as she put it.

I was very pleased with the first shot of Big squish though. She rather enjoys the attention I believe.

Spring Stroll

Just a few shots I took whilst out on a family walk over Easter. The River Tees runs right through Barnard castle, the town where I grew up, and I have many fond memories of walking through the trees and listening to the running water.

Look what we found...

.... in our local pond! (Or boating lake, fake lake thingy in Alexandra park.)

We went to feed the ducks and instead we found a little terrapin. Well actually we found three but the two bigger ones were further away and didn't look so cute. And yes, the water really is that disgusting green colour! In fact it was a little smelly and there appeared to be as many plastic bags, bottles and other random bits of rubbish as there were fish....

Ladybird ladybird...

Taken with my 50mm lens as I was just out at the play park with the children and happened upon this little ladybug. Had I known there would be a pretty little bug on pretty little flowers then I'd have taken my macro lens and spent a bit more time over it!

I thought I'd play around with the colours today.

Mr. Squirrel's neighbour.

The children spotted this squirrel high up the tree in our next door neighbour's garden. They wanted me to get a photo of it so they can "put it in a frame on the wall".

I grabbed the zoom lens, told the children to be quiet and popped out the front door. Just as I'd got my settings right with a couple of test shots I heard a click of the door opening behind me and some loud whispering. Unfortunately so did Mr. Squirrel so he ran off!

I don't think Mr. squirrel is quite as pretty as squirrel nutkin who visits our bird feeder in the back garden but he did look very cute with an acorn in his mouth.