Flowers and Pollination

I am quite sure that Corfu has far more interesting garden life than Caddington, but half an hour spent in my own back garden just yesterday lunchtime, nevertheless reminded me of the young Gerald Durrell and his fascination for the closeup world of a wall in ‘My Family and Other Animals’.

All this group of images were taken handheld with just the one lens and no flash. They did however rely on the intermittent bright sunshine between scudding large Cumulus clouds, and the dying down of the breeze; and not a little on the amazing high ISO response of the Canon 5D MkII – most were taken at 1600 ISO! If I had steadier hands the yield would have been greater, but what I lack in steadiness I make up for in patience and determination.

The TUC-biscuit spider was barely a millimetre in total length, and these bees were tiny compared to ones I’ll see later in the year, most were less than a centimetre and a half, they were also very energetic – I wonder they ever had time to gather nectar! A true gardener would have been horrified by the couple of clusters of black aphids that populated a pair of flower stems, but I wanted to get as detailed a shot as I could, so persevered to get the shot I did. The fine hairiness of the stem made an entirely natural home for this colony.

This lunch break was my Gerald Durrell moment.