Bright Eyes

There's been something of a roe deer population explosion up here in the North East in recent years, so it's not that unusual to see them during a country walk, but this encounter was a little out of the ordinary. We spotted this doe deep in the shadow of a pine plantation and with sunlit fields behind her she was little more that a silhouette - but her eyes shone in the gloom. I've often seen eyeshine in animals when they've seen caught in the car headlights in the dark (the cat's eyes effect) but it's not so often that you see it in daylight; it's only visible here because it was so dark in the plantation - the fact that I got a picture at all is a tribute to lens image stabilisation technology. 

 Here is the lovely blue-eyed doe after having the shadow areas lightened - but that's all. 

 Here's the head portion of the image enlarged, showing the eyeshine more clearly - spooky, eh? The eyes shine like this because of a highly reflective layer behind the retina (the tapetum lucidum) which reflects light back through the retinal cells and enhances the animal's vision in dim light.

 As soon as she turned her head away the effect disappeared.

A little further down the footpath (beside the South Tynedale Railway at Alston) we met her consort, who spotted us immediately ...

 .... watched us for a minute or two while chewing a leaf ...

... then ambled off into the undergrowth, with just a parting glance in our direction.

The Pulling Power of Plums

This year our Victoria plum tree has been laden with so many plums that they almost broke the branches off. There's only so many plums you can eat but they make excellent bait for attracting butterflies, like this red admiral.

The bloom on the skin of a plum is yeast, so the juice quickly ferments and the butterflies become inebriated and easy to photograph. I'm not sure if the wings of this one are drooping because it's sunbathing, or whether it's just drunk on alcoholic plum juice, but either way ...

... you can get very close to the butterflies in this soporific state. It's interesting to see how hairy they are.

Rotting plums piled on a bird table will attract red admirals, peacocks, small tortoiseshells and commas - and also wasps, so you need to keep a wary eye out for them.

Willowherb Blizzard

This diadem spider Araneus diadematus laboured to spin its invisible snare but made the mistake of weaving it downwind of a patch of Rosebay willowherb ....

... which made it instantly visible to insects that might otherwise have blundered into it. I watched the spider - perhaps driven by hunger after failing to catch any prey - meticulously trying to remove the cottony seeds from the web. It managed to clear the central  zone, but the outer sticky threads ....

.....collected more seeds faster than it could remove them, thanks ..

... to this large patch of willowherb upwind of the web, that released a blizzard of seeds with every puff of wind.

It's interesting to watch the willowherb seed pods open. First the four outer segments peel back like brittle banana skins, exposing ....

... a double row of seeds on each.  In still air they remain attached in rows....

.......pushed upwards on the cotton threads as they dry in the sun ....

 

.... until the slightest puff of wind whisks them away and up into the thermals. No wonder this plant is such a successful coloniser.

It's also the food plant of the elephant hawk-moth caterpillar 

Last Thursday's Guardian Country Diary was an account of pursuing this comma butterfly into a patch of willowherb.....and unleashing a blizzard of seeds in the process.