Solderpunk's Lo-Fi Nature Log
A list of bugs, birds, flowers, fungus, mammals, trees and other natural things identified in the parks and forests nearby my home. Includes 640x480 pixel photographs of things which hold still long enough, saved as 50% quality jpegs. These lo-fi images are not even half a megapixel in resolution, but they are far from useless or ugly. If you were sitting in front of the one of the flowers or ducks I've encountered, you could compare it to my photo and say with confidence "yep, that's it!". And while they are no match for the real thing, more than enough of the beauty of nature comes through to make these shots worth taking and sharing.
Photos are taken on a Ricoh GR Digital, circa 2005 (thanks, leeb!), in "soft color" mode. They are saved to the SD card at 640x480, I don't resize them on my computer. I do run them through the following ImageMagick command, which typically reduces the filesize three or four fold without making the quality anywhere near three to four times worse:
convert -strip -interlace Plane -sampling-factor 4:2:0 -define jpeg:dct-method=float -quality 50% input.jpg output.jpg
Identification of species usually starts with some kind of smartphone app installed by non-Luddite wife. I do my best to confirm these via web image searches and consulting Wikipedia. Mistakes are very possible - I'm completely new to this! I'd be happy to receive corrections if any nature sages can provide them.
Last updated: 2025-10-03
Bugs
- European peacock butterfly? (Aglais io?)
- Lesser purple emperor (Apatura ilia)
- Orange tip butterfly (Anthocharis cardamines)
- Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta)
Birds
- Carrion crow (Corvus corone)
- Common blackbird (Turdus merula)
- Common buzzard (Buteo buteo)
- Common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs)
- Eurasian blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla)
- Eurasian jay (Garrulus glandarius)
- European robin (Erithacus rubecula)
- Goose, unidentified (Greylag goose?)
- Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major)
- Great tit (Parus major)
- Grey heron (Ardea cinerea)
- Long tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus)
- Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)
- Mandarin duck (Aix galericulata)
- Pied wagtail (Motacilla yarrellii)
- Pigeons, probably many kinds, need to study...
- Song thrush (Turdus philomelos)
- Twany owl (Strix aluco)
Flowers
- Bramble vetch (Vicia tenuifolia)
- Burnet bloodwort (Sanguisorba officinalis
- Common columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris)
- Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale)
- Endive (Cichorium endivia)
- Glory of the snow (Scilla luciliae)
- Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus)
- Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium)
- Purple deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)
- Siberian squill (Scilla siberica)
- Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis)
- Spotted deadnettle (Lamium maculatum)
- Tall goldenrod (Solidago gigantea)
- Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica)
- Winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)
- White panicle aster (Symphyotrichum lanceolatum)
Mammals
- Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber)
- Hedgehog - probably European (Erinaceus europaeus) but can't rule out northern white-breasted (Erinaceus roumanicus)
- Nutria (Myocastor coypus)
- Red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris)
- Raccoon (Procyon lotor)
Mushrooms and other fungus
- Artist's Conk (Ganoderma applanatum)
- Beefsteak Fungus (Fistulina hepatica)
- Giant polypore (Meripilus giganteus)
- Golden Scalycap (Pholiota aurivella)
- Some kind of Oyster mushroom, unsure which...
- The Prince (Agaricus augustus)
- Scrambled egg slime (Fuligo septica)
- Sulfur tuft (Hypholoma fasciculare)
- Wolf's milk slime (Lycogala epidendrum)