Regular blog readers will know I am lucky enough to frequent a place that last year had daily sightings of the recently colonising Southern migrant hawker Aeshna affinis, in fact its possible I spent more time than anyone else observing them last year. A month or 2 ago I was emailed about them by James…
Day 2 of my dragonfly species a day to celebrate the British Dragonfly Society’s National Dragonfly week. Today we’ll look at the Scarce emerald, Lestes Dryas Like other emerald damselfly species they are emerald green in colour and they have a habit of sitting with their wings at 45 degrees to the body, rather than…
A couple of weeks ago I was watching a female emperor dragonfly ovipositing (egg laying) in a pond, when an azure damselfly started mobbing it. I took some video of it happening and 2 other instances and have put them together in the video below.
Today I popped into Bedfords Park for a break and to have look for red eyed damselflies. But what caught my attention were the many emperor dragonflies spread along the lake margin, each patrolling their territories and scrapping with each other where they crossed paths. Occasionally one would hover, and this one did at a…
A couple of weeks ago the turtle doves were posing well, for turtles doves at least. Sadly the sun was elusive, and the turtles were never in a good position when it was out. Still I got a few shots in the cloudy conditions.
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook you will know I have had stag beetles Lucanus cervus in my garden recently. Ive had both stag beetle and lesser stag beetle, but I’ll cover the photos of the former from Friday in this post. 2 males were found in a bucket in the garden.…
I came home last night and was shown 2 male stag beetles and a couple of lesser stag beetles in a bucket in my garden. I’ve taken a few photos which I’ll hopefully post later, but here is a shot take with my 35mm at f11 with a 0.5second shutter speed, to show how still…
Today at Wat Tyler CP there was a a bluethroat….and I missed it. I did however come across a turtle dove on a telegraph post. Which was joined by a wood pigeon. Our biggest Pigeon with our smallest. The turtle dove then flew down to the ground. I didn’t get too close and it was…
Just got in from lovely evening walk with a class of kids where we got within 3 metres of a wild rabbit! For once I had my camera with me and took these shots. Bare in mind these were taken with 30 kids (being remarkably calm and quiet!) right there next to me. In fact…
I started off today with a trip into town and had the rest of the morning to head to RSPB West Canvey Marshes. Or so I thought until I hit yet another standstill of traffic in Essex! I didn’t have time to get to Canvey, so I popped into a private reserve instead and found…