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On our most recent trip to my Grandpa's house, I was able to have a look around his garden and photograph anything that interested me. It was quite a sunny day, so the garden bees were out. His garden is pretty much full of various sorts of flowers, so it was no surprise to see plenty of bees around.Below is a picture of an arch in his garden, surrounded by climbers with flowers.
I always find it quite tricky to get photographs of bees, mostly because they almost never stay still for more than about 3 seconds. If you are lucky enough for one to land on a flower for more than 3 seconds, I find that either a) my camera refuses to focus on the bee or b) the bee is so far inside the flower that it can barely be seen in the picture. So I had a go at taking a picture of one while it was flying. My camera still focused on the flower instead of the bee :(I'm not quite sure of the ID of the bee in the photo below.
Never mind, I suppose taking pictures of bees could be something I could work on in the summer. Anyway, moving on, also in his garden was a wasps nest, but rather where you wouldn't expect it. They had made a nest in his nestbox. It was quite a strange sight, I must admit. As you will see in the picture below, the nest bulges out of the entrance hole of the box.
Hopefully, I will post again tomorrow, providing the weather is good enough for me to go out and take any photos. Maybe even some more bee photos, who knows?!
Recently, I visited a local woodland to do some birdwatching. I saw quite a range of birds, but most surprisingly, a wide range of plants too. On a few of the trees in the woods, a rusty brown lichen was seen on the bark. I am assuming that it is lichen, please correct me if I am wrong. It did literally look like the tree had gone rusty and it was a really interesting effect. 
Also seen was this moss-like plant on the woodland floor. 
Foxgloves were seen along the edges of the path. It was great to see such a range of colours. The air was quite damp and my camera lens steamed up from time to time, so there were little bird photograph opportunities. 
I know this has been a short post, although I plan to post again a bit later so do pop back.
Over the last few weeks, I have been collecting some garden photos for this posting. I thought I would do a bit of a mix and match posting, rounding off the summer so far. I haven't posted in a while, so this posting has quite a few photos in store...First up then, a photo which I should have posted ages ago. It really is a bit out of date now. A month or two ago, we saw Alliums bursting out in the front garden. It is the first year we have planted them, and certainly won't be the last either. 
In the back garden, the birds have been busy feeding most of the time, despite the hot weather. This female Chaffinch was seen amongst the fruit bushes a couple of weeks ago. I was quite surprised with how well the photo came out. Its sometimes not until you view the photo on the computer these things.
The Goldfinches have really got through the Nyjer Seed fast recently. The feeder is now quite near the end of the garden so it seems to be getting more visitors. I'm not sure why, but photos of Goldfinches taken by me often appear quite grainy.
And lastly, a Blackbird, which looks to be a juvenile, although it may just be a female. We have seen a few more Blackbirds around this year.
Hopefully I can get back to frequent posting now. I have a couple more postings planned for this week. Even though this is my first post i a while, I have still been reading all of your blogs too. As it is the summer holidays here, I have lots of time to do more on the blog.
