More iPhone Pics

Chicory, Cichorium intybus, in Jubilee Country Park.  21 July 2013.

Here are a few more iPhone pics taken during the year.  There's a bit more of nature in this set.

The first one is a bank of chicory in Jubilee Country Park.  The park has this flower as its emblem.  I took this shot to show the white-flowered plant in the foreground.  It seems to be a natural variety. 

The salad chicory plant is a different subspecies, but you can certainly eat these flowers, if you are prepared to chance the possibility that they have dog urine on them.  It's a popular park!

Hayes Common, 20 June 2013.

Someone had left this lighted candle on the barrier.  Probably it had been there since the night before.  It's vanilla and hazlenut scented, which sounds quite tasty.

Railway bridge on Tiepigs Lane, Hayes.  20 June 2013.

I took this because it seemed to be in a state of disrepair - and it's a well-used bridge, with 8 or more trains an hour, and it's my route into London, so I did wonder how long it would be left to deteriorate.  But it has since been repaired. 

The sign on the left identifies the bridge and gives a phone number.  So if it falls down, we will know who to call, if we can get the sign out from under the rubble.

Rowan trees on Ashdown Forest.  6 August 2013.

Two beautiful Rowan trees on Ashdown Forest.  Rowans put on a lovely show in the second half of the summer.

An iPhone in London

Covent Garden, 9 August 2013.

These days, often the only camera I have with me is my iPhone.  It's all completely automatic, but it takes quite a good quality photo and is always there.  So here are a few shots taken in London this year; nothing special, just things I wanted to capture. There is only a little nature involved.  There will be more of that next time.

This sandy arena (arena seems the right word for such a thing!) had been set up at Covent Garden for some sort of marketing publicity.  It looked rather like a giant hovercraft except for the ball players inside.

Queue for the V&A on 30 May 2013

I went with my sister to see the David Bowie exhibition at the V&A.  But these queues are quite usual even without a popular exhibition.  The whole place is popular.

Diana's Diner, Endell Street, 9 August 2013.

Probably the last chance to take a photo of this shop front.  It's sad when small places like this close down, specially in the heart of London.  Though, it might just be a refurbishment.

Harris Hawk in Trafalgar Square, 23 July 2013.

And here's some nature .. but well tamed.  This is a Harris Hawk, used to control the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.  Not to hunt and kill them, but to scare them off.  It works well, too, combined with the banning of stalls selling bird food.  There used to be drifts of pigeons everywhere, and everything was covered with bird droppings.  Now there are hardly any, and the whole place looks better for it.  You can see a couple in the background.

I was surprised to find this bird apparently unattended.  I have seen their handlers before, in quiet side streets with their birds on their arms, but never birds alone like this.  And look how normal the people seem to think it is to have a large, sharp-beaked raptor perched nearby! 

High Elms Trees, part 2

Giant Redwood, Sequoiadendron giganteum. High Elms Country Park, 5 August 2013.

Also known as Wellingtonia.  Of course, this is just a baby compared to specimens in America.  It's the biggest species of living tree by volume.  But even so, it looks impressive.

I tried several different ways of capturing this tree, but in the end there was no way to get a good view of the whole thing without some branches from neighbouring trees getting in the way.  If I went closer, the tree was far too foreshortened, even using a specialised lens.  (I'll mention the camera equipment at the end of this series.)

Foliage and bark of Giant Redwood.  High Elms Country Park, 5 August 2013.

The leaves are tiny compared to the needles of the pines and cedars elsewhere in this set.  The bark is pretty special; it is spongy and light, and when I was in the Boy Scouts they were introduced to me as "punch trees" because you can give them a hard punch without damaging your hand.  This light, spongy bark insulates the trunks during forest fires - and, apparently, they need these fires to clear out competing trees if seedlings are to grow successfully. 

Coastal Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens.  High Elms Country Park, 5 August 2013

This is even more of a baby, despite already being quite tall.  They can grow up to 379 feet, says Wikipedia.  

Foliage of Coastal Redwood, Sequoia sempervirens.  High Elms Country Park, 5 August 2013

The foliage and bark are quite different.

Corsican Pine, Pinus nigra, and Scots Pine, pinus sylvestris.
High Elms Country Park, 23 August 2013.

I'm not sure which subspecies of Pinus nigra this Corsican pine actually is.  It's a Mediterranean tree. The Scots Pine behind and to the left is native to the UK, but not to this part of it.  But lots of Scots Pines have been planted locally.  They seem to have been used as a landscaping feature and you can often find them at the tops of hills or on ridges. 

Top of a Scots Pine.  High Elms Country Park, 5 August 2013

One way to distinguish a  Scots Pine from other pines is to look for a reddish cast to the bark at the top of the tree.   It's clearly visible here.

More in part three ...