Weather - spaced out!

 Nice aurora on the evening of 4th November. I pottered out and took a few pix after younger daughter, who lives south, had alerted us to the lights.

Our house with the aurora behind.

And again...

Aurora and shooting star.

There is a bit of an issue with dust on the camera sensor with night photography; irritating, the images take a lot of cleaning with my software (Photoscape X, free). And i do clean the sensors, but it's tricky.

These images are not much meddled with in the software though, other than a bit of cleaning, and some cropping. I like to try and keep them as much as possible as they came out of the camera. The aurora doesn't really look that green to the eye, the camera exaggerates the colour. The aurora just looks as if it isn't as dark as it ought to be for the time of night, and then the brightness moves about. 

The next night things went a bit bonkers. The Weatherman mentioned more aurora in his report, we checked the app and yes it was a red alert.

This is probably the second brightest aurora I've seen since we've lived here, it was all around us, not just to the north, and it was very active at times, flashing and moving. Some colours we certainly visible to the eye. Again, with the photos I've tried only to clean and manage the images a little, not go for massive effect.

Aurora over Dounby.

Our house with aurora to the north.

Aurora to the east, our neighbour's trees, the rookery.

And again...

Aurora to the west.

The weather itself has been pretty odd, no wind, just still for days. Today was the first day for ages with any kind of breeze, and that died away for the afternoon.

Still water and lots of reflections led to a few attempts at photographing the landscape.

A moorland pool, Swannay Loch and the Hoy Hills.

Swannay Loch.

The view north towards Eynehallow and Evie.

We'd walked to the trig point at Costa. I'd never been there before, it is a slightly awkward place to get to with limited parking and a bit of a walk along the road to get to the footpath.

Louise walking back to the trig.

Moorland pools and the Hoy Hills.

 The day before we'd walked up to the Birsay Moor trig point. Another place which is slightly awkward to access. Jack Snipe, Snipe, Raven, Reed Bunting and male Hen Harrier were the only birds.

 Further expeditions were made. An evening outing to check on the Barn Owl drew a blank for that but I did relocate the Great White Egret, back at its original location, seen flying in to roost.

Loch of Wasdale.

A trip to Dounby by bike to the post office involved a diversion to Loch of Sabiston, just checking for egrets, but there were none. Just two flightly Waxwings in Dounby village.

Broken tractor, Dounby.

The light traps have produced just a few Mottled Umber. Unless I get a very warm evening now I probably won't use the light traps now for a while; unless we head south of course.

Mottled Umbers and slightly sinister thoracic face.

The only other beast of special interest was a Staphylinid beetle, I found this in leaf letter whilst looking for moth pupae. Always a slightly tricky ID but this is the species of this genus  these generally turn out to be here.

Lesteva sicula, 3.5mm, a small beastie.

The pits on the elytra, how large, close and deep they are are needed for ID, and can only be seen properly if the elytra is spread or detached. The short antennae and shape of the pre-apical segments are also very useful for identification.