[dontdopeas]

Can you spot the hares in my poor black and white conversion?
These things were freakin massive!
But they were all lazy and spent most of the time I was there just lying down on the grass.

Peacocks are weird. They have this sort of belief surrounding them which makes them appear like really elegant and beautiful birds. I think it’s the big tail that throws people. When you actually look at them, they are hideous. They look like glorified vultures.
Yuck

A close up of one of Meg’s old shoes. I liked the little doodles all over them so I took a pic of a duck

At the Marina, the local birdlife was disturbed by a dog which got a little excited and plunged himself into the water.
This displeased many of the swans who pulled the above face and made a strange hissing sound.

In the butterfly world there were a whole swarm of them which weren’t that easy to spot.
For instance, this one here tried to disguise itself as a winged leaf.
All in all though I think I did a pretty good job in spotting a variety of the different species.

A HDR hidden anomgst the animal shots, at last!

I spotted this in my ‘Organise’ folder and thought, what the heck, I haven’t done a HDR in ages.

Originally the composition of the shot was okay, I mean the "face" was there and it was okay but I thought a HDR might make it more interesting, the reflections of the mirrors have been brought in and the texture on the box door look a lot nicer than it originally did.

I was unfortunately forced to use the flash for this shot.
There wasn’t a lot of light and I wanted to get a large depth of focus to capture all of this flutterby because I quite liked it’s upside down stance. Maybe you and I differ but I’ve never seen one upside down so it made me smile.

NB: just noticed i seem to be getting into this square format, more and more recently

I don’t remember the name of this bird so if somebody could help, that’d be great.

When we first came up to the enclosure for this bird, he was no where to be seen.
After a few seconds though he came waddling over in the most fantastic manner I’ve ever seen, wings and plumage all ruffled and on display. brilliant.

He (I suppose I should say, ”or she” as well) barely stood still so this shot was only one of a couple that turned out alright.

A while back me and Meg had a pet snail. called "Snail".

We kept him in a plastic muffin box which I stabbed some air holes in. filled with soil and lashed generous servings of lettuce and other green goodness in ever so often.
"Snail" was a no frills pet and that suited us fine.
Unfortunately though after a few days of solid rain we feared the worst and suspected he drowned.
Meg’s mum got rid of him to save us the trauma.

R.I.P. "Snail"

I’m quite happy with the way this shot turned out.
The spider had built a web in between a few stalks of a potted plant and spent most of the time sat there in the middle, waiting for lunch.

For some reason, the out of focus background turned blue, which should originally have been green, only some mild sharpening done in post so it’s not me.
Anyway, i’m glad of that because the "white" of the web has become more prominent against the dark background. It was VERY difficult to capture this image.
There was the world’s lightest breeze blowing but as macro photographers will no doubt know, through the lens it looks like a tsunami.

Eventually after firing off enough shots and trying to block the breeze with my body (and failing) I got a few out of it which were okay.