Courting adder

A couple of weeks ago I was lucky enough to photograph a male adder. He wasn’t alone, as there was a female there trying to bask nearby and he was paying her lots of attention, crawling over her and smelling her with his tongue. Trying to get under her. And sometimes nudging her in the…

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Gibbaranea gibbosa orb weaver spider

Back in June a colleague brought in an interesting orb weaver spider with distinctive ‘bumps’ on the abdomen. After some detective work and ultimately an ID from Peter Harvey, it was identified as a Gibbaranea gibbosa. Its not particularly rare, but a firs for me. Just goes to show new species can turn up anywhere,…

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Best of 2016 part 2

Here is part 2 of my 2016 review, carrying on from part 1. I had a wildlife trip up to Yorkshire for an early birthday present and one of my targets was a common hawker dragonfly. I had seen a probably common hawker in the Cairngorms back in 2014, but I’d never had a good…

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Best of 2016 part 1

As is tradition now, as 2016 is drawing to a close, I’ve written a review of the year. Its been a mixed year, where for reasons that will become apparent below, I’ve not been able to get as much with the camera as in previous years, but I’ve had few nice wildlife experiences, got a…

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Wet fox

Back in February 2015, there was a fox that had been fed (not by me) coming to a car park regularly during the day. Once those feeding it stopped, it soon learned that people meant dogs not food and the fox ceased to be so tame. But before it did I had a few lunchbreaks…

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