A few from an August visit the ‘Britain’s Rainforest’ Canvey Wick in 2013. 2013 was a good summer for clouded yellow butterflies, I saw more that year than all previous years combined. This field grasshopper posed nicely. A Common Damselfly perched on a rose hip. And this holly blue on some bramble. A common darter…
On Tuesday I got word there was a grasshopper warbler about, but it took 3 attempts to hear and then finally see it, which was my first ever view of the species. I then staked it out yesterday evening, when the light was much poorer of course, and got a couple of OK grab shots…
At lunchtime I bumped into a couple of folks looking for the southern migrant hawker (one of who was Simon NL on Flickr, click his name to see his excellent pics). I got a couple of photos of the perched male today: Sadly with my Sigma 150-500mm rather than my 300mm prime, which I can’t…
Back in August, I went along to the Buglife walk at Canvey Wick. The weather was not perfect but improved as the day went on so we did find some nice invertebrates, which is what the site is famous for. In fact it is believed to have more species per hectare than any other site…
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…
This evening I went for a quick walk around Wat Tyler CP and thought I’d check a wasp spider hotspot. Sure enough there were 3 webs with spider present. Only one was in a reasonable position for photography. They were eating the grasshoppers, like this lesser marsh grasshopper. And this meadow grasshopper. I got some…