Some Helvick Wildlife

Back down in Helvick with a new lens, what to do, what to do….

OK some of the local fauna came out to play in the sunshine so I tried to see what I could get. These aren’t going to win any nature photography prizes but considering that they were the product of about 5 minutes snapping away at one of the flowers in the garden I think they turned out OK. 

Two important lessons learned – F/1.8 allows you to really crank up the shutter speed so it’s possible to capture bees as they flit from flower to flower but F/1.8 also delivers awesomely shallow depth of field so your bee’s wings may be in focus while its head isn’t. Bummer.

Some sort of bee. Very spiky fur, quite the striking orange hair do to be honest. I think it’s a Bombus Muscorum assuming I’m reading my guide to bees correctly. Kinda cute, wouldn’t have said it was a Bumble Bee but apparently it is.

 

Bombus Lucorum I think, maybe Bombus Hortorum. Very big bee. And this one is carrying a 50-100 bee mites that you can see clustered around the front of its thorax. 

Almost certainly a Bombus Lapidarius Queen.  Quite a big Bumble Bee whatever it is and they wouldn’t keep still, lots of photos of a leg or a blurred wing but this one is quite a nice effect.

I went out earlier to take a look at the new windmills up on the hill overlooking the bay. I think these are about 50m to the turbine, 50m diameter. possibly a bit less. Not the biggest by quite some margin but a lot bigger than I expected when I got up close. Hardly the most exciting target but they did hammer home a major drawback of a fixed lens, you need to move yourself around a lot to get big things into a usable frame.