Common Emerald

I'd been planning a relatively quiet day, to try and catch up after several days of fieldwork, but the weather forecast suggested it might be one of the best days this week, so Pete and I headed out to Castor again. I've been fighting off a cold that's circulating in the household, and although we didn't walk all that far, I felt very tired. It didn't help that I'd decided to carry my 70-300mm lens in the hope of photographing dragonflies at Oldfield Pond - it seemed to get heavier and heavier!

In the end the fauna of the pond was a bit disappointing. There were quite a few Common Emerald damselflies, and a scatter of Ruddy Darters, but that was about it. The windy conditions made it difficult to get any sharp shots, and I'm wondering whether my lens needs calibrating, as I seemed to have a higher than usual number of out of focus images. When life slows down a bit I shall have to run some tests... Luckily this one came out pretty sharp, even though it was taken when the sun had gone in.

In the afternoon Ben and I cooked a raspberry and pistachio meringue roulade, as part of Lizzy'a birthday meal. It turned out surprisingly well. Before the meal we all had large mango daiquiris, and then she decided we should try to take a family photograph. I set up the tripod, and eventually found the remote control, but somehow managed to set it to take photographs at a set interval, and then couldn't seem to reset it! There was a lot of laughter during our photo shoot, though only one or two images actually manged to catch us all with our eyes open, looking at the camera and smiling. I've added a couple of my favourites as extras.