Driving to Glen Shee, we passed plenty of red grouse and we stopped to photograph an number of those in photographic postions. I managed to get one making that fantastic call. A few were wandering around the ski resort car park. We also passed a golden plover, which I managed one ok photo of.
One of the species I wanted to see in Scotland was ptarmigan. These are a bird of mountain tops in the UK and it usually it would have involved walking through snow to get them in March, but the record warm weather meant there was little snow about so easier walking. Unfortunately it also meant…
Carrying on with my photos from Scotland, I took a number of small bird photos in Cairngorms. I got one good photo of a crested tit, which I had to crop quite heavily. The siskins stayed too far away as well. I got a couple of ok shots though. As always in Scotland, the were…
I could write a lot about these fantastic birds but I thought I’d just let the photos do the talking: For anyone with welfare concerns with this bird you can rest easy: the SNH capercaillie recorder was present while I took these photos.
While not a target species, with them not being 100% wild or native in the strictest sense, coming across the reindeer on the cairngorms was still pretty cool. It was great to see them in an at least semi natural habitat. I tried a different shot too.
One of the reasons for the lack of recent posts was that I was away in Scotland, in the Cairngorms National Park. I saw lots of new species and will be posting the photos in the near future. My first new species was the red grouse. Not to long after entering the national park this…
A few weekends ago I went to Rainham Marshes where a friend of mine had organised a pond dip session. We found plenty but 2 species were of interest to me. The first was this saucer bug. You can see the front legs which have been modified into a prey grabbing pincer. I also got…
I had a quick dip in a pond at Wat Tyler CP this evening just before the sun had set. And when I say quick I mean I put the net in the water just the once! Along with a diving beetle larva was a small newt: I thought it was rather small for a…
A few weeks ago I found an alderfly larva in the bottom mud of a pond. They tend to be found in and on the pond bottom. They are quite distinctive with their many gill filaments on the abdomen and the pair of pincers at the front. They can sometimes be found crawling through weed…
A few weekends ago I popped into Wildwood Trust near Canterbury, which is a wildlife park of UK animals. They are a big part of the beaver reintroduction scheme here in the UK, and have a few on site as part of their breeding programme. While I was there, ice had formed on their pond…