Blog update and my #Challengeonnature photographs

First a bit of an update on the blog ... I'm going to be blogging less often for a while as my husband will be in hospital for the next six weeks. It's going to be a difficult time for all of us. I don't expect to have much time to do anything but visit him in hospital and look after the kids (and the dog), so the blog will have to take a bit of a back seat. If all goes well though the plan is to be back to blogging more regularly in time for the orchids and butterflies. Thanks for reading the blog and I hope you'll keep checking back as I plan to blog when I can!

And now for something more fun ...

Over the last week I've taken part in the #challengeonnature nature photography challenge, where you post one of your favourite nature photos every day for a week. It was lovely to look back over some of my old blog posts and pick out some favourite photos. These are the ones I chose (although it was really hard to pick and I could have done with more than seven days for the challenge to be honest):

Day 1 - Snake's-head fritillaries at Iffley Meadows in Oxford. These are such beautiful flowers and are a bit of a favourite of mine as I wrote a piece about them for a Wildlife Trust book about Spring, which is due to be published in a few weeks time.

Day 2 - Our beautiful back garden red kites. I feel so lucky to live in a part of the country where the red kites are thriving and just hang around in our back garden.

Day 3 - A silver washed fritillary on silver washed hogweed. I love this photo because it's so sparkly and summery. Reminds me of good times ahead.

Day 4 - Fantastic Mr. Fox. Bug Mad Girl and I met this fox when we were walking on Hayling Island. He stopped and stared at us for a couple of minutes before carrying on and disappearing into the bushes. I love his expression!

Day 5 - A walk in the Chilterns. This was taken on Whiteleaf Hill, one of our local woods, and reminds me of many wonderful walks up there.

Day 6 - Up close and personal with a hornet. It's not often you can get so close to a hornet, but she was very calm (after a bit of a tantrum when she was scooped up in some leaves and put in a wheelbarrow) and sat quietly while we took a good look at her before releasing her away from the garden. She was beautiful, very intimidating and surprisingly hairy.

Day 7 - A selection of my favourite orchid photos. I love the fact that these beautiful, glamorous flowers grow wild around us. It was hard to choose my favourite one, so I had to go for four of them.

Bee orchid - what's not to love about a flower
pretending to be a bee!  It even has hairy bees
knees and antennae!

Greater butterfly orchid - these are so tall and
graceful. Truly stunning!

Chalk fragrant orchids - As the name suggests, they smell wonderful and
look pretty good too.

Musk orchids - this one is very special. It may be tiny and green,
but it is extremely rare and a small patch of them grow just up the
road from us. 

Hope you enjoy a selection of my favourite photos. They all mean something special to me and remind me of good times ahead in the spring and summer.