I don't know how you survived yesterday. I was heading back to Surrey and coming down the M6 from Shap I have never seen so many lightning strikes on the hills in front of me, at least I was sitting in a dry car. Keep up the good work and I hope that the weather improves for you.

Thanks; I keep hoping that another member of the family will turn up to enjoy the flowers I have specifically sown for them.

John

There were a couple of these blues in the field, I think they were fresh and on the basis that I only ever have Common Blues in that field that's what it must be but is it?

I think that I will limit myself to three plants :) . For a tree I would chose a Salix and clear stem it to 6ft and pollard it. For a shrub it has to be the ubiquitous Buddleia and for a herb it must be the perennial wallflower ‘Bowles Mauve’, mine have not stopped flowering since I planted them sev...

I'd hazard a guess at a Birch Sawfly going by its antennae and some of the wing markings, on the other hand it is certainly a sore fly.

I can't identify this character, I know I have seen him before, possibly on children's TV, any ideas? and if someone knows what he might turn out to be it will save me going through Porter.

The one problem that I find with my Canon SX20 is the inability to manual focus. The auto focus has a tendency to focus on the bright flower and leave the dull butterfly in a soft focus. The camera does have an electronic manual focus but I have never been able to use it in the field, I am sure that...

Top of a hill? Gallows maybe.

The black Adder is most interesting because some 10 years ago I disturbed a nest of black Adders just south-west of Chiddingfold, I have never seen them since. I wonder if the colouration is local. I suppose three miles as a snake slithers?

If they are in an area of lawn that is due to be cut, dig them up with a good core of soil and replant. It's so wet now that I have moved a number that managed to flower in my lawn into the wildflower patch.

There I was thinking that it was the site's fault and all the time it was me and my browser. Thanks for the tip. btw how did you know I used Firefox?

Is there anyway of preserving EXIF metadata when we upload a picture to this site? My resized image ready for uploading still has the Exif info in it but when the picture is posted I can find no way to read it. Maybe it's my browser? The reason I ask is that I could learn a lot from the excellent qu...

For a free organizing software have a look at Helicon Photo Safe. The rather off-putting blurb talks about safe storage so that no-one else can see your photos but it really is an organizing program. I have it but haven't really used it, though I do use some of their paid for software. There are bot...

The best of the free software progs is PhotoScape. I let Picasa import the files from the camera because it wants to and then I edit with PhotoScape. I have given up with Photoshop.

John

If birds are allowed here are 4 Tawny chicks just out of the woodwork, mother Tawny was seeing off a crow when I spotted these above my head.

20mm over the weekend to this afternoon here in Surrey. The final insult was the lawn turning white with hail.

I had the following reply from a post in the Canon forum which confirms what has been written here. Does your lens have USM written on it (or HSM if it's a Sigma)? That stands for Ultra (or Hyper) Sonic Motor. So, yes, your lens does emit ultrasound. Now my ears are old, bent and knackered; but my b...

I've posted the question in the Canon forum to see if anyone has any ideas. I think that I only experience the problem with zoom lenses on my Canon 7D.

Photographing this moth proves that auto focus on a Canon disturbs them I am interested to see that you have also suffered this problem! I found the same when using AF-S lenses on my Nikon; in particular, when trying to photograph Burnet Companion moths flying together with Dingy Skippers. I did se...