Remember your first set of wheels?

Illustration Friday time again.
The topic this week is Remember.
Do you remember your first set of wheels?

Becoming a twitcher

Well, birdwatcher anyway, apparently the term twitcher is reserved for those who actually spot and record the sightings of rare birds.
And so far my feathered friends are your commoner garden variety, but that's fine by me, I could watch these little characters all day.


Green finch and blue tit, rare enough to see them feeding together, although it's the Great tit who seems to be the unsociable eater and chases everybody else off.


Blue tit



Coal tit



Green finch

The Guardian weekly photo competition

This would have been my entry for the Guardian photo competition
had I got it in in time. The topic is Retreats so my tenuous link would be As winter retreats, spring emerges, coiled and ready to burst into life.
Well, there's always next week, when hopefully, I'll be more organised and the topic will be easier!

White Death Spider, Misumena vatia

I photographed this spider last summer.She was living on the cosmo flowers in my garden, hiding on the underneath of the petals most of the time.
I'd never seen a white spider before so I googled her and came up with this name, White Death Spider, sounds very dramatic, but have a look at these photos and you'll see why it's quite appropriate.



Here are a few facts I gleaned from this site
The high brow name is Misumena vatia, aka the Crab spider, due to the crabby way she moves, but the name she prefers herself is Flower spider, much prettier!
They don't weave a web, they ambush pollen gatherers, honey bees, butterflies etc. etc, injecting venom and sucking their prey dry there and then. Delightful!
The female is larger than the male, I think my photos are of a female which is why I'm referring to her all the time.
She can change colour from white,to yellow, to orange, very slowly, to camouflage herself against the flower she's on.
Maybe the spider in my photos just wanted to try pink for a while, unfortunately no can do.
Actually on the same cosmo plant there are white flowers, so obviously she was just having a stroll!


In the last photo here, I think this particular stance must be her defence mode, it certainly makes her look vicious, even I'd think twice before taking her on!

Noble savage Moon Dancing

Noble Savage is the topic for Illustration Friday Night this week.
She's celebrating the full moon. As you do!!
One of my favourite songs by Van (the man) Morrison is
Moondance
Beautiful romantic lyrics and great music to dance to as well!

Penguin, Illustration Friday

I painted this little fellow in acrylic and he's my submission for Illustration Friday, the topic being "polar".He's perished with the cold, the poor thing.

Owl on the prowl!

Another original, digitally enhanced. Started out as an ink drawing and finished off in photoshop.