What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

[Padfield]

I can't come close to producing pictures like Pauline's (fantastic!!), but I do know that badgers love cat food:





Those were taken with the infra-red on my video camera, from inside the house.

He doesn't hang around when I'm outside:



Guy

[Pauline]

Hi Em, Susie, Pete and Guy

The badgers and cubs have been coming every night for 5 years now. I sometimes sleep in the garden to be closer to them. They will eat peanuts, fruit and peanut butter sarnies as well as a lot of other things. There is usually a race between the badgers, foxes and hedgehogs as to who gets to the goodies first. I film them every night so I can look at the pc each day to see who has been visiting. It is a lot busier at night than it is during the day.

[KeynvorLogosenn]

we get foxes round my way, but I have been allowed out to get a good look at one!

[bugmadmark]

Amazing pics of the Badgers. I have a set a short walk from my house - but ive only ever seen where they have dug out their fresh burrows. I spent 4 hours late one night with a friend who is a badger expert and we never saw a single one. The closest i get is when i drive by their bodies on the bypass ;-(

I took a walk withthe family this evening - partly to try and clear a vicious hangover (i got in a 4am - not something I can recommend when you are 40). Anyhow, I saw 2 tortoishells flying through wooded walk behind my house - i wasnt expecting that and very welcoming it was as they literally flew into the sunset.

[Dave McCormick]

Great badger and fox pics! I have never seen a badger although ones exist where I live. Plenty of phesants though:



-pair of male common pheasants fighting

actually, around here, they forget they have wings and rather run away from a car coming at them, then at last second, either fly away or get stuck in a fence trying to climb throuhg holes in it. Anyway, Here is a few pics I took last december (I love landscape shots in winter):

Strangford Lough from Mountstewart Temple of the winds, Co Down Northern Ireland (Late sunset, looks cold looking at it):




Another look at the sky when sun just disappeared almost:



Looking at Dromara Hills:



I recall camera nearly froze to my hand when I took those shots.

[Padfield]

I used to watch badgers in Bagley Wood, near Oxford (this would have been the late 80s). One day, looking for used setts, I came across one snared up with a wire slip-loop attached to a post. I took the snare, called the police and they confirmed there were badger baiters operating in the area. People were catching the badgers, tying them to posts and setting their dogs on them. The policeman who came round the woods with me was equally as sickened as I was and said they were doing what they could to wipe it out but the practice was widespread. He was an interesing chap, too. He told me that he had been called to these same woods very recently to check out some stiletto heel marks disappearing into a thicket. He took me to the place, where the markings were still visible, and we followed. The stiletto heels led to a small clearing, with an altar at one end and a tiny, newly dug grave, all marked with little stones. He described how his men had dug up the grave, but had only found a few broken seeds and nuts.

Apparently, bored local housewives had started up a (quite harmless) witches' coven in the woods and on full moon nights, while I was hidden in one part of the woods watching badgers in the clearings, the witches were sacrificing seeds in another.

I did go back on subsequent nights to catch a glimpse of a diaphonously clad housewife in stilettoes, baring her breast to the moon, but I think the local press got hold of the story and they moved on.

Guy

[Susie]

Hehe! Great photos and great stories. I didn't realise when I started this thread what fun it was going to be.

I used to help out at a reserve which had a badgers' sett and unfortunately the place was often attacked by people trying to dig out the badgers.

There are lots of badgers around here (not in my garden, I am not that fortunate) but I have never yet managed to see one (again, apart from the dead ones on the road of which there are loads).

Apparently most of the dead badgers you see on the roads are the young males which have been turfed out of their setts to make their own way in the world, or so I have been told.

[Pauline]

If I get bored during the day I have 9 of these guys who are always ready to play and pose.

[Neil Hulme]

Hi Pauline,
Re Photo Number 1 "If I get bored during the day" - might I suggest that you refrain from watching Peter Ebdon play snooker on the TV. Hope to catch up with you when the house move is done and dusted.
Neil

[Pauline]

For those of you who expressed an interest in the badgers I thought you might like to see a couple of photos of 'my' boar called One-ear for obvious reasons. He had a badly damaged leg so on the advice of the local badger group I caught him and took him to Wildlife Aid for treatment. He was subsequently returned for release and went on to produce another 3 cubs the following Spring.

[Algol]

that first fox pic is awesome, looks like he's smiling. and a bit like the fox off foxy bingo advert

[Chris Pickford]

Some of us take the macro lens off the DSLR and put something on with a longer focal length......

Chris

[eccles]

longer focal length

How much longer would that be, Chris? This looks a little better than most telephotos can do.

[ButterWild]

Hmmm im going to be playing with a really cool site i just found! and uploading all my pics and vids onto it.
www.hobeze.com

[Chris Pickford]

......focal length (Eccles).

Taken with a 600 mm APO refractor (ie a small telescope) with a 2x multiplier.

Chris

[m_galathea]

Messing around with telescopes is great fun isn't it Chris! I'm sure mine will be back out the box again soon. The moon is definately the most fun to draw and photograph IMO.

Alexander

Here's my best effort to date:

Moon small.JPG (149.02 KiB) Viewed 710 times

2000mm, afocal projection, Acer CI-6330.

[bugmadmark]

My son just asked me why planets, moons etc are round? I am a scientist (biologist) and so naturally I have absolutely no idea! Who has the best answer?

[Markulous]

Centripetal force

[KeynvorLogosenn]

I thought that centripetal force is an external force that is needed in order for the planet to follow a curved path/orbit?

I also think that the explaination is...
They look like Sphere because of the nature or gravity, think of gravity as a force that pulls inwards, towards the centre, hence why we when we jump, when are pulled/attracted back to eath again (the earth also is attracted to us when we jump) towards the centre. So every part of the planet is being pulled towards the centre, forming a sphere shape, apart from mountians etc. The larger a planet gets, gravity gets stronger, so any large mountians etc are crushed, making it a more perfect sphere. Hence why we don't have mountians that are 50 miles high or sky scrappers with loads of stories.

But they are not always a perfect sphere, take Earth for example. If a car was to travel non stop around the equator at 100km/h (about 62mph), it would take 16 days 16 hours and 45 minutes. A car driving around the Earth from North Pole to South Pole and back round would finish 80 minutes earlier. (I read it somewhere). This is because the earth's diameter at the equator is 7, 926 miles as opposed to between the poles at only 7, 900 miles (roughly). The Earth bulges at teh equator because of the Earthis 24 hour rotation.

If you want to know more about Orbits, its Keplers laws I think you need

Em

[m_galathea]

Mouse is a good physicist Gravity is the key.