What have you seen

I am often disappointed at Minsmere, lovely place, just wish they would cut reeds in front of some hide's.

Right....what's this bug?   I think I know.

How about

Rosemary beetle (Latin name: Chrysolina americana)

BM....correct!

Evidently an alien invader, likes Lavender.

Really beautiful.

GL

Your post reminded me of something we came across at Minsmere. A wasp or bee type creature known as a bee wolf. It looks like a very bright yellow wasp and burrows into the ground, where it apparently takes a bee into which it lays its eggs. The new bee wolfs then feed off the inside of the bee until ready to fly.

Sadly I did not save the pics.

Great wildlife photos on this thread many of which I am unlikely to see in real life.  I especially like this recent one - hope you don’t mind me making it a bit bigger to see it better Bluemalaga.

No probs N1805 

I was surprised how deep the bird drops into the water. It does not catch on the wing as the Sea Eagle does, but drops onto the fish and becomes virtually submerged.

The odd sight prior to this catch was a Kingfisher sat on its fishing perch looking up to the Osprey sat in a tree picking out its supper. The Kingfisher remained motionless for about 10 minutes just focused on the Osprey.

What happened next was not clear. The Osprey launched from the tree and the Kingfisher flew across the water. The Osprey then chased the Kingfisher.

I do not know if the Osprey actually targeted the Kingfisher from the outset or just gave chase as the Kingfisher flew across it's path. Either way it was a strange sight.

This particular bird No28 is the dominant male in the area and has sustained a quite badly damaged wing in its disputes, but still manages to fly to Africa and back each year.

N1805, as a matter of interest how do you enlarge the photo's we post? thanks

Bluemalaga - Thanks for info & great photos.  Have only ever see Ospreys in trees or on nest platform in Scotland & Rutland Water never catching fish.

Oneputt - I worked it out on the practice area Rochelle set up - How to use club together - Tutorial for uploading photos. There’s various info regarding using different hardware/software etc from members in the discussion.  I understand from posts there that each photo has to have a hosting site from where I understand you use the drag & drop method.  I guess using the following method CT is the hosting site.  Using a laptop, Windows 10 & Chrome. Logged in.  Went to end of discussion to post reply.  Typed in.  Found photo.  Right clicked on it then clicked on ‘open in new tab’ then clicked on that tab, dragged the photo to discussions tab then down & dropped it in reply box.  Can only do it with photos already posted.   [ChasnCath’s method in the How to thread]    If this works it is from your recent story.

BM

Also saw the same Bee wolf's couple of years ago, but didn't have a suitable lens with me.

Minsmere can be a very frustrating place, the times we have walked around there and seen nothing and I 'm thinking I would see more on my local patch.

It is the only place that I know of where you stand a very good chance of seeing Adders, having said that,this year they did not show for me.

It is a lovely walk and good cheese scones.

Just ordered some prints for our club's annual exhibition, really struggled this year to have any exciting encounters with nature, so have raided some pics from previous years.

GL

I just took a couple of pics with my canon 100-400 lens, which surprised the other guys around who found their tele lenses to long. All was well after cropping in photoshop, I think I inadvertently trashed some saved files from my hard drive. OOPS