Things I will miss about the UK

1. The friends we have made here.

2. Boss and Cherub, whom I do not know when, if ever, I will see again. With my nieces and nephews, I knew I would remain a part of their lives. I may not stay a part of Boss’ and Cherub’s and that causes a slight, worrisome ache. And oh, as I write this, a tear. I am a sap.

3. Flowers. It’s not that other places or Australia don’t have lovely flowers, but I noticed flowers more over here. I’m tempted to list individual flowers but that would make this list burdensomely long. I will particularly miss snowdrops and bluebells, which I very much doubt I will see in Aus or elsewhere.

Lots of groovy flowers.

4. Seasons. Seasons is why I noticed flowers more. I love the changing of the seasons.

5. Birds, especially tits and robins. As I type this a coal tit is calling someone from the tree outside my office window. Whoever he’s looking for, she’s not answering. My office robin returned yesterday: I came back from getting my morning coffee and found him flying around my office. I duck and wove to get to the window (which had been open a crack) and threw it wide open and then stepped into the corner, making myself as still and thin as possible so that he would fly out again. He also left a little goodbye present for me on one of my files.

Bullfinch, Fort William, Scotland, August 2010.

6. Really, really cold weather. I truly will miss this. I love winter – proper winter. I loved icy mornings and frost covering everything and the ever-present hope of snow. And oh, how I love snow. Someone remind me of this when I am complaining about not feeling my fingers, toes or nose during our cycle ride.

A snow covered oak in The Common, Southampton, UK, February 2009.

7. Long summer evenings.

8. Decent public transport and the ease of a car-free life here. I suspect Aus will not be an easy car free life and that we may not remain car free for very long. We’ll see.

9. Rainbows. Maybe because of all of the rain but I have never seen as many totally awesome, end-to-end rainbows as in the UK. And quite a few double rainbows as well.

10. Old houses and buildings of the many periods of architecture I enjoy: Georgian, Tudor half-timbered houses, cute thatched cottages. Also, all the many lovely village churches.

Southease Church, Kent, UK, January 2009. Near here is the part of the River Ouse in which Virginia Woolf drowned herself.

11. Chips! As in, for the Aussies, hot chips.

12. Green, green grass that is soft and not filled with biting ants, prickles and bindis (a horrid tiny plant in Aus that pierces the bottom of your bare feet and hooks through your skin; much of my childhood was spent painstakingly picking bindis out from my heel).

There’s probably more, but that’s what I can come up with at present.

Snake-head Fritillary

One of the things people know most about Australia is that it has all kinds of critters that can kill you.  I like to regale my workmates with stories of the creatures that were part of my life in Oz: spiders, biting ants, biting flying creatures, snakes, leeches.  Sometimes people would tell me that the British Isles do have snakes: the adder.  To which I like to retort, “That may be so but Australia has a death adder.  Ha ha, we win.”

English flowers, however, are very, very cool.  And one of my favourite of the English natives is the snake-head fritillary.  And if you’ve never seen a snake in your life, I guess its patterning looks a bit snake-like.

Snake head fritillary, Exbury Gardens, April 2010. (Photo taken with the Fuji S9600, to demonstrate I still love it despite owning the G11)

This is the only fritillary I have seen in real life and I guess I may not be seeing any more as I will be departing these verdant shores ‘ere winter arrives.  These bloom in early Spring and they are already gone now.

The Art of Stalking a Butterfly

(apologies to Annie Dillard for misusing a quote from her wonderful book, Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek.  I wrote all about how great that book was here, and almost everything in that post still holds true today.)

Recently (ish) I commented on a post by Flighty about a great shot he took of a Peacock Butterfly about my inability to photograph the things.  I know this is because I am hideously impatient.

While trying to identify some butterflies that my significantly more patient partner photographed, I read that to get a photo of a butterfly, one should watch and wait as they like to return to feeding spots.  That’s probably not groundbreaking information for anyone with a decent dose of common sense, but it seriously never occurred to me.  Sure, I wait and watch but I invariably also chase the poor things down.  Off it flits to another flower and off I go to follow.

My partner and I, being witty, hilarious people, often call butterflies, butterflown because by the time we draw the other’s attention to a butterfly, it has disappeared.

Armed with the advice to WAIT, I did just that while on a short walk with some friends around Keyhaven Marsh, a bird reserve.  We saw waterbirds aplenty but there were also many butterflies among the hawthorn and one particular one that kept teasing me.  My friends were patient and my partner was off taking photographs of some rusty machinery, so I watched.

And it worked!

Peacock Butterfly, Keyhaven Marsh, April 2010 (photo taken by the Canon G11 if you're interested).

The butterfly liked to land on a particular hawthorn flower, so I adjusted my settings to focus on that flower and waited.  I took one picture, then I inched in further.  The butterfly flew away but I remained there, camera pointed at the hawthorn flower.  The butterfly returned and I repeated my process – take one photo, inch in closer, take another if it remained or wait for it to return if my edging closer scared it off.

Flighty’s picture is better, but I’m rather chuffed with mine.