What is the UKs ‘best’ invertebrate? Its (just about still) Insect Week so I decided to try and find out. With 1000s if not 10,000s of species to choose from so it was not easy. This list would no doubt be different from any other person, and I tried to make sure I didn’t pick…
Its that time of year to look back and reflect on what I’ve seen and photographed. No trips abroad this year, and I largely visited places I have been many times before, but I certainly found some new things and improved my shots of others. The year started, as it often does with me, inside…
This year I decided that I needed to get some good shots of raft spiders, the largest spider species found in the UK. Unfortunately living in Essex there are no sites nearby, the closest good site I’m aware of being Thursley Common in Surrey, where the Bog Raft Spider Dolomedes fimbriatus can be found. A…
Please the read introduction text on this post first HERE (which also has some other useful info) What a difference a few days make. On Wednesday I was thinking the southern migrant (or blue eyed) hawkers might have been having a brief early(ish) emergence and numbers reducing, then Thursday and Friday resulted in plenty of…
I got a Text today from the wonderful Howard Vaughan informing me that there was a pair of Black Winged Stilts at RSPB Bowers Marsh. They are the first seen in the UK in 2014 I have been told. I was fortunately about to go on my lunchbreak, so popped over to bowers where a…
The Ruddy Shelduck originates from Southern Europe, North Africa and South and Central Asia (with some populations wintering in South East Asia). It is a large rusty orangey brown duck, 64cm in length and with a wingspan of 133cm. The male is slightly larger the female and weighs 1.4kg to her 1.2kg (Robinson, 2005). The…
A few photos of common lizards I took a couple of a juvenile months ago.
I managed some nice photos of a young adder this morning. It posed well, didn’t move, but as always with these snakes something wasn’t great, the light. It was a sunny morning but this snake was in the shade and I ahd to resort to flash. My flashgun batteries were dead so I had to…
In 2010 a number of Southern migrant hawker dragonflies (Aeshna affinis) turned up at Hadleigh Country Park, a few miles East of Wat Tyler CP. They also turned up at Vange Wick (not Vange Marsh) just to the south of Wat Tyler CP, so I’ve been hoping they would turn up here. Last year, I…