wordless wednesday - primrose

Huge clumps of Primula vulgaris are everywhere here at the moment; blooming profusely on verges and roadside banks. This one is outside our house gate.

Craning for a better view....

It wasn't all hard work in the garden over the long weekend. I checked the local bird news thursday night and was rather surprised to see we had a rare visitor on island. When my alarm went at 7:00am on Friday I was in the car and driving the mile down the road to the reserve in question to search for the British Isles tallest bird Grus grus, the common crane. It wasn't visible where expected and just as I was giving up hope it took flight out of the reeds and, circled by a halo of mobbing gulls, performed a brief circuit before dropping down out of sight again. Now I was pleased to see it but this was a) a rubbish view and b) an unphotographable state of affairs. I had to try again later and when I did someone said "you looking for the crane mate? Its over there." So that was easy.

Much better views on the second look - complete with feral greylags for scale.

It was rather windy which added tremendous depth and volume to those fluffy plumes.

It even had a bit of a feed. Check out the yellow soles to its feet - reminded me of a snowy egret. Just after this someone else arrived and told me about a weird gull nearby. Whilst we were establishing what this was (by which I mean other people were discussing what it was in depth whilst I looked at it and tried to learn - I don't really do gull id when it gets complicated!), the gulls went up and we had a flyover from a) an escapee black swan (!) and b) the crane honking as it went over at low level. At this point I remembered why you never ever leave the camera in the car, no matter how close you are to it as a perfect photo went begging. Oh well, it was still pretty cool.

New life

Traditionally in the Haku household the Easter long weekend is spent planting up the vegetable garden so that's how I spent today. Nothing to see yet of course but in the meantime here's some shots of new life bursting forth inside.

These are chilli seedlings. A mix of Capsicum baccatum "lemon drop" and Capsicum annum "Fish"

These are more of the same with a load of Capsicum baccatum "Dedo de Mocha" on the right and with a few mouse melons and west indian gherkins in the middle.

I also have a few chilli plants that I purchased pre-germinated as small plants. In order of heat (from mild to near nuclear).......

Capsicum annum "Hungarian hotwax"

Capsicum annum "Jalapeno"

Capsicum annum "Fresno Supreme"

Capsicum chinense "Scotch Bonnet"

Capsicum chinense "Orange Habanero"

Monday scorpion

Its been a little while since I put an underwater shot up so here's some vintage indopacifica from 2006. This little guy is probably the smallest scorpionfish I've ever seen. The image on your screen is probably twice life size I'd guess.

As you can see it hasn't really mastered the inconspicuous camouflage they tend to go for yet but that will come in time. The sort of thing they ambush at that size is probably not too sharp-eyed and his tiny little venom spines will protect him while he grows up.

Field of Gold

So we finally moved into our new house which will probably be reflected in quite a few posts of bits and bobs around the house's exterior but I just had to share this with you. Obviously we went through the usual delay between seeing the house and completion of the legalities and getting the key with the result that by the time we moved in we got a surprise in the form of our current view:

daffodils are cool.