A few photo from Wat Tyler CP during the recent sunny spell. First up a ruddy darter. This wolf spider was warming her egg cocoon in the sun. And this lizard posed for a photo… …before playing peak-a-boo.
I’m a bit of a pond dipper, as some regular readers will have worked out, but there is one species that has always eluded me, the water stick insect. This year I saw a preserved specimen and a captive one (which I never managed to photograph), but never before had I seen a live wild…
More recent photos from Wat Tyler Country Park. This time a female emperor dragonfly which was laying its eggs on some fallen reeds. This angle, although a bit top down, shows the tip of the abdomen in action below the surface. And I tried an in the environment shot too.
The rubbish weather so far this summer has stopped me getting much in the way of macro shots at all, let alone of the local speciality, the scarce emerald damselfly. However the improved weather last week did let me get the following.
Having realised how rubbish my wildlife stalking technique was on a trip to Scotland, when an opportunity has presented itself to practise, I’ve had a go. A couple of weeks ago I came across one of the (usually a bit wary) rabbits in Wat Tyler, in an area less likely for dogs to appear so…
I should probably start this post by warning that there are GRAPHIC images of nature in the raw (please forgive the cliché). It features a gull doing what it does best (scavenging) and what it needs to survive. If you of one of those people that don’t ‘do’ nature, probably best to skip this post!…
Last weekend was supposed to be a relaxing long weekend with the girlfriend camping in the New Forest. Sadly the weather decided otherwise, so we stayed in Essex and went a on few day trips. One of these was to London, which included a walk through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Just after we walked…
On a recent visit to Thursley Common, which was sadly pretty unproductive for invertebrates, we found this wood mouse which was feeding on grass seeds near the picnic area. It seemed unfazed by the humans around it but wouldn’t quite come out enough to pose. We all waited for a good 20 or 30mins and…
On Friday evening I spotted a spider in the bathroom. On closer inspection I realised it was a spitting spider. These are described as uncommon and this was only my second ever one, the first having been found in my house also. They are called spitting spiders because they catch their prey by spraying it…
After visiting Elmley Marshes last Saturday, we popped over to East Blean Woods, a Kent Wildlife Trust Reserve which is one of the best best sites for the rare heath fritillary butterfly. It took a while to find one as the sun had disappeared behind some thick cloud. But we looked around a promising spot…