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What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:27 am
by Susie
The heading says it all - what do you do to get you through til spring?

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 10:58 am
by eccles
I'll snap anything that makes a nice picture, but mainly local woodland birds. When the leaves have fallen they're more easily visible.

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:06 pm
by Dave McCormick
I got for landscape shots, always good ones out there in winter months, and I look about for the few moths that are around too. I'd snap local birds if my lens was longer, but for me there is always something interesting about in every season to photograph. I like shooting the mountains in distance with snow on top in winter and when there is a mist over the large lake here and anything else good in my travels about.

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:40 pm
by twitcher
Mainly wildlife pics,I took these 2 last year.
Regards Shaun

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 3:23 pm
by Annie
Gramophones and pre-war cars. That reminds me, must get my anorak dry-cleaned

This is the same as my car, although mine's green;

Image

bit of birding, too - though mostly done through the telescope at home

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:00 pm
by KeynvorLogosenn
Me?
Work, Work and more Work.... :(

Mouse

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:16 pm
by Padfield

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:29 pm
by Gruditch
I've already got plans for every weekend up on till mid December, mostly Deer for the next few weeks then some landscape stuff, mostly coastal. Climbing a mountain on Christmas day this year, so we will start to do a bit of extra walking. plus we fly our birds more in the winter months, and I may even turn the TV on in February, as the Six Nations Rugger is on, so loads to do. :D got this one at the weekend.
Image

Gruditch

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:48 pm
by eccles
Nice one, Gary. I've heard that red deer stags can be very belligerent during the rut. Have you ever had to run for it?

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:51 pm
by Gruditch
I've had three encounters that were too close for comfort. One was when a big stag decided he was coming my way so I better move, only I was looking through the view finder wondering where the hell he had gone. When I gave up looking for him, I looked up from the camera to find him 10ft in front of me, heading my way.
On another occasion, we were trying in complete darkness to get to our chosen site before dawn, and ended up unwittingly passing though the middle of a group of hinds, the stag was none too happy. Then last year while edging quietly through some woods, trying not to be seen by a stag and some hinds we walked straight into another very bad tempered one, fair play to Lisa, she had her camcorder on and kept on filming. :D

Below is the one that decided he was coming my way.

Gruditch
Image

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 9:11 pm
by eccles
Bit of camera shake there? :wink:

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:25 am
by Neil Hulme
Hi all,
I still stick with butterflies! If I'm not writing up survey results, newsletter articles or habitat management reports, I'll be reading about them, sorting out my piccies, drawing or painting them. I tend to spend quite a lot of time outdoors bashing scrub and generally looking after several local butterfly sites, and if I'm not doing that I'm generally dreaming about them. In fact I'm a butterfly bore! Oh yes, I do get drunk quite a lot! :D Following Gary's comments, I reckon I could be tempted by a bit of falconry. At my local sheep fair a few weeks back they were flying a Snowy Owl and this beauty. Now that looks fun!
Neil
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Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:59 am
by Markulous
Depending on weather and what's happening:

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 1:06 pm
by m_galathea
Caving!

Some of you will be familiar with Priddy Mineries, but this is what it's like underneath:
St Cuthberts Swallet.JPG
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St. Cuthbert's Swallet, Somerset.

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:40 pm
by Susie
Goodness me! What a wonderful array of interests you lot have. :mrgreen:

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:18 pm
by Dave McCormick
Cool pics, yeah I love getting out when I can in thse months, but I'll probably have a lot of coursework to do like usual, so I'll have to get that done when I get it and find the time to actually get out at all. But I am doing ok with it at moment.

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:25 am
by KeynvorLogosenn
Coursework Dave?
Tell me about it... I am swimming in all the paper work on my desk at the moment! :|
The good thing about it is, once it's done. It's done. It's just the doing part that seems to be the problem :lol:
Good luck with it!
Mouse

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 11:21 am
by Piers
Lots of shooting followed (hopefully) by lots of cooking and eating. I only shoot to eat by the way, preferring to rough-shoot a brace of partridge that have lived an enjoyable life in the wild, than buy and eat some poor chicken with rubber bones that has never seen the light of day in it's life.

My motto - if you don't think you could stomach to kill it yourself - you shouldn't be eating it.

Nothing gets on my nerves more than people who tell me that I am 'cruel' to shoot, only to go home and tuck into cheap sausages made from intensively reared pork!!

When it's too cold and rainy I'll be in a big shed tinkering with a traction engine.

Felix.

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 1:50 pm
by eccles
Even vegans have to kill a lettuce. :)

Re: What do butterfly enthusiasts do during the winter months?

Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:29 pm
by Annie
Felix wrote:When it's too cold and rainy I'll be in a big shed tinkering with a traction engine

Ooh, likey likey. My father recently dug out all his old cine film of when he and his friends used to tear(!) around the countryside on traction engines in the 70's, I had no idea that anything that moves so slowly could strike so much fear into the general public!