Budding leaves

Look! Leaves! Very soon! Whoo-hoo!

Japanese theme Brighton

We had a little walk in Stanmer Park this morning.



And in the afternoon on the seafront in Brighton.






And who do you think we met? The young Elvis Presley, of course!!



To think that he was performing in a local dingy bar! Blasphemy, I say!



Now: be warned. The maker (I presume) was very protective of these wonderfully, amazingly unique, imaginative, fundamentally ground-brakingly fantastically original hats. When she saw that I took a snap of her marvellously brilliant never-seen-before-in-all-of-human-kind woolly creations, she said - looking very insulted, indeed, as if I had a baseball bat in my hands instead of the camera and was just about to smash her stall into pieces, or steal all her marvellous creations and become a millionaire selling them on: "I'd rather you didn't!!!" Haha. Nevertheless, here it is: (DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RECREATE ANY OF THESE WOOLLY HATS AS THEY MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT!!!)(You have been warned!)(I'd rather you didn't!)



Well, anyway.... subsequently we moved onto late afternoon-evening entertainment! First we went for a drink at Madame Geisha.















Madame Geisha is a funky bar/restaurant on three levels.












Toilets!



And then onto Moshi Moshi for some Japanese dinner. Which, surprisingly, wasn't a disappointment! (Saying that, I wasn't expecting much because - as we all know - E-Kagen is the best Japanese restaurant in Brighton.)









The rest of the evening is a bit of a blur...

Tide Mills abstract

Stanmer Park at twilight

Peacock (Inachis io)

I was very surprised to see a peacock butterfly a few days ago. I didn't think butterflies would be flying about yet! I was excited. So excited that I didn't manage to take a photo of it - it kept flying off every time I tried to attack it with my humongous lense.

Well, today I was more careful. Look!



I was as excited, but in a bit more controlled, stealthy manner.

I saw another butterfly, too! A female Large white. Identified by the two spots and a streak on its upperside forewing.



I've had trouble identifying the Large white from the Small white, but today I found a good, simple identification rule:

(Looking at the forewing upperside patterns)
no spot = small white male
one spot = large white male
two spots = small white female
two spots and streak = large white female

Anyway - not only the butterflies, but the butterCUPS are out, too.



And geese flying left and right.






Blimey, it'll be summer soon!

Skylark

I've seen skylarks at Tidemills before, but today was the first time I had my long lense with me and managed to capture one or two.

You know skylarks - they do this gorgeous song in flight when they rise vertically straight up while singing to their heart's content, flap their wings all the while, ascend higher and higher until one can hardly see the little spot in the sky from the ground level, and then, finally, they go quiet and descend straight down and rest on the ground for a while, until the next musical flight.

Well, here's one of them during the in-air singing.



I did a little collage of another one during its display flight.



And afterwards, a rest by blending into the surroundings on the ground.

Yuk!

This is for all you pollen allergy sufferers. Enjoy. As I know too well, you don't have to smell it, you don't have to get it in the delicate inner linings of your nose at all... no.... all you need is to SEE it and you start sneezing! Yes! That's how crazy you are! Ha-choo! Ha-choo! Ha! There you go! Try and stop now!



And then - ever wondered what goes on inside a daffodil?
I wish I hadn't. But there you go.









Oh why can't it be just about lovely fluffy yellowness? Why does is have to be about the horrible black things, too.....?

My Disney World has been shattered...

OK, that was a little silly... I feel like a great tit now. I have to end this post with something more up-beat that those horrible black things in lovely yellow things...

So here goes. A great tit.



I can't believe how difficult it is to get a decent photo of a tit! (!) They fly off as soon as you try to very slowly and carefully get closer to them. I'm sure these birds move more slowly in Finland...