A change of scenery

 Around 12.30 hrs, on Friday, I headed off to spend some time with my brother, Sye, and his wife, Yve, at their home in the delightful village of Aton Clinton, Buckinghamshire. Sye had undergone some pretty serious medical procedure earlier in the week and I needed to spend some time with him in an attempt to convince him that it was time to call it a day on the pursuit of the mighty dollar! Basically, I went up there to give him a bollocking!! It is not an opinion unique to me, as my other brother, Timbo, and my son, Benno, had also offered similar lines of thought, via the phone. 

On Thanet we have to make do with Rose-ringed Parakeets!
Aston Clinton's garden visitors are far more majestic!

As things turned out, it was a very enjoyable couple of days spent in each others company. Yve and I engaged in many hours chatting about the roller coaster journey of the grief process. Her brother, Rob, had died of cancer on the same day as Bev! For those blog visitors who wondered why I had seen a Chinese Water Deer, at Wilstone Res. and a Red Kite over Hatfield Oak Lawn Cemetery, now you know why I was up there! This visit had no such agenda, and so Sye and I were pretty much free to do as we pleased. I'd taken all my camera kit, so it only seemed fair to show Sye how much scope is opened up by exploring the potential of macro image capture. It was Sye's idea that, on Saturday morning, we take a drive across to Ivinghoe Beacon where we might find a few butterflies to point the kit towards. Sye had never previously used extension tubes, so it was all very new to him. He was, therefore, more than happy to point his 70 - 210 Canon lens (with a 36mm extension tube fitted) in the direction of whatever species were prepared to pose. It was a lovely day and the site was busy with families enjoying the facilities and flying kites from the top of the beacon. We did our our best to stay away from the crowds and were finally rewarded by a couple of encounters with Dark Green Fritillaries, nectaring on thistles.

This was the first time I've ever had to opportunity to capture images of this species, so I probably went a little OTT?  Saturday afternoon was to see all of us take a drive across to Cow Roast, to visit the "Artizan PH" which is owned by our family friend Alan D. Although I'd never tell Alan, to his face, it is a very impressive pub and staffed by a wonderful crew of guys & gals. We ended Saturday's antics with a couple of pints in The Rothchild Arms, just yards away from Sye & Yve's front door. It had been a very enjoyable day. For Sunday morning's walk, Sye and I decided to take a stroll around his local patch. This turned out to be a very good decision.

A Roe Buck on the side of RAF Halton airfield

The route took us alongside the RAF Halton airfield before making a right hand turn to follow the Wendover arm of the Grand Union Canal for half a mile, or so. On reaching the second foot bridge we crossed the canal and retraced our steps. We were probably out for nearly three hours, there being so much for Sye to play around with his camera. Although there was lots to keep me entertained, I didn't point the camera very often instead, hoping that Sye might understand what added dimensions are opened by this very simple camera tweak? We were well on the homeward leg, Yve already telling us that breakfast would be ready in less than twenty minutes, when I spotted a female Beautiful Demoiselle (dragonfly) which was posing very conveniently right beside the footpath. Sye had an extension tube fitted, thus rattled off a number of shots before I did my best with the 100 - 400 mm lens set at 1.8m focal length

We did get back in time for breakfast (brunch?) but not before I'd captured a few shots of this new species for me. Thankfully, it was a fairly stress free drive back home, around the bloody M25, and I'm now looking forward to getting the moth trap back up, and running, having seen what has been attracted to the traps of other "moffas" around the East Kent coastline whilst I've been away.