After visiting Epping Forest and Cornmill Meadows (see the last post) we headed for Bedfords Park. It rained for the first couple of hours before beautiful sunshine emerged. A quick look for wasp spiders was fruitless but we found this lovely common toad (Bufo bufo) crawling across the path. I sadly don’t see toads often,…
The day before visiting Rainham we went to a few other sites in Essex. We started in Epping Forest where we found some common lizards. Along with some meadow grasshoppers. This one started stridulating.. There were loads of migrant hawker dragonflies hunting over the scrub and heath, but none posed for photos. We then moved…
My final post from Rainham. The ‘other stuff.’ We saw 2 grass snakes, one of which I photographed. There were also a few wasp spiders, including one in a photographable position I got some nice photos of marsh frogs too And a nice one of a common lizard on the boardwalk.
While at Rainham Marshes we noticed a fair few male migrant hawkers patrolling territories. The light wasn’t great and neither was the angle from the boardwalks so we didn’t bother with them. But then we found a spot where we could get to their level with the sun behind us, only for the sun to…
On Sunday, Adam and I headed to Rainham RSPB reserve and walked along the boardwalk to the dragonfly sculpture where Brenda, who works at the reserve, was looking for bearded reedlings/tits. While waiting and chatting I spotted something run along the edge of the reeds – moorhen or water rail? Turned out it was a…
Today at Wat Tyler Country Park I was given a heads up that an osprey was present over the fleet. I managed to sneek out and get a few photos of it perched just on the opposite side of the fleet! Later on after work I walked down to the sea wall and found a…
A few more from Hadleigh CP. Here is a meadow grasshoper head on. And a Rosel’s bush cricket.
Following on from my last post, at Hadleigh Country Park there were were also plenty of butterflies. This Essex skipper was a nice find. It looks like a small skipper but the underside of the antennae are black. There were also some marbled white butterflies about. This one was looking a little tatty I tried…
A couple of weeks ago I headed to Hadleigh Country Park to look for wildlife. There were a number of hoverflies around so I tried to capture them hovering in flight. Though Im not 100% happy with them I had some success, certainly better than I had managed before. The key seemed to be using…
Just a couple of photos of this small scavenger water beetle, Hydrobius fuscipes, taken in the photographic aquarium.