Grasshoppers

Last night it took me ages to get to sleep and then I kept waking up and it would take me ages to get to sleep again. When I woke up at 6am this morning I couldn't be bothered to take ages to try and get to sleep again and so probably get up quite late, so I just got up then.

After having a shower etc. and breakfast I looked out my window and it looked like there was hardly any wind like yesterday, perfect for macros. But I still had all my photos on my comp from yesterday that hadn't been sorted or backed up. I didn't want to format my memory cards for shooting new pictures until the images I had taken on them had been backed up. So I sorted through the photos and backed them up, but this took about an hour. By the time I was done there was a slight breeze.

I went in the back garden anyway to see if there was anything interesting to photograph. Due to the breeze I had to use John K's technique of holding the grass the insects were sitting on with one hand and resting the lens on that hand and shooting with the right hand. As well as the breeze, the insects seemed pretty active, so probably would have been better shooting them at least an hour earlier (about 7am).

After that I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica with Mac. After lunch we watched another episode.

Yesterday I went to the field near Lubenham to try and get some butterfly photos, I haven't been able to visit it for the past few weeks due to:

• having to stay home to look after granny while Clare an Brian were away
• Bad weather
• Watching the olympics

I was dissapointed to find all the ragwort and thistle flowers have gone over and so there were hardly any butterflies there.

It was very noisy and full of grasshoppers though, so I tried taking some pics of them, which was quite tricky as they kept jumping away and hiding under the grass. When I got back home I went on the pinternet to see if anyone had tips for photographing grasshoppers. The only advice I could find was from MacroJunkie, who said that it's very hard to photograph grasshoppers in long grass, so he gets them to go on his mown lawn and shoots them there. Unfortunately, you would need to have grasshoppers in your garden to use this technique.

So today I went back to the field near Lubenham to try and catch some grasshoppers so I could put them in the long grass in our garden. Then assuming they don't all disapear, I'll be able to use MacroJunkie's advice. Hopefully they'll lay some eggs as well so we get baby grasshoppers next year. When I got back home I showed the grasshoppers I'd caught to Ben and his mate Mathew also had a look at them, and he wanted to catch some so we went down the old railway line towards Lubenham and caught quite a lot down there. It worked better with Ben and Matthew helping, as when capturing them myself one would jump out when you put a new one in after you'd caught a few. We used a glass jar to capture them initially and then transferred them to Ben's old stick insect tank.

After doing that I went on the pinternet a bit and copied this morning's pics to my comp. Then I started watching 'Downfall' with Mac. I thought it was about Hitler playing downfall, but it turned out just to be about Hitler's downfall at the end of the war.

Food
Breakfast: Crunchy nut cornflakes; cup o' tea.
Lunch: McCoys BBQ Chicken flavour tortilla chips/crisps; Chicken Tikkabilla sandwich spread sandwich; banana; slice of marble cake; chocolate club; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Lincolnshire sausages; mashed potato; baked beans. Pudding was blackberry cheesecake. Coffee. Roses.