I’ve renamed this annual round-up as ‘Encounter of the year’ because my emphasis these days is less about photography and more about appreciating the plants, birds and animals that Britain has for what they are. There were times in 2024 when I thought my year would be a blank sheet of paper. It could so easily be called the ‘year with no summer’, or perhaps the ‘year with too much weather’. I have a garden filled with nectar-bearing flowers, but …
Category: insects
I was on a social media platform a few weeks ago when there was a sudden flurry of excited reports about a large copper butterfly being seen. Why was that exciting? Because the Large Copper went extinct in Britain 150 years ago. Now I’ve photographed every British breeding butterfly, but I don’t have a photo of the large copper. It’s a truly beautiful butterfly, with burnished orange upperwings and spotted underwings. It’s a close relative of one of my favourite …
Recently,I stood next to a small patch of scrubby grassland. Roughly triangular in shape, bounded on each side by footpaths worn by countless walkers boots, it measured perhaps ten feet across with the rotting remains of a small tree, now reduced to just a few moss-covered logs in the the middle. Anyone, including me, would have glanced at it quickly, seen a tangle of leaflitter and nettles and passed by. But yesterday I was looking for a bee. I’m trying …
At this time of year, when the days are short and gloomy, I like to look back at the encounters I’ve had during the year and try and choose my favourite image. Every year, it gets harder. Do I choose the best photo, or the rarest or most unusual species? Or the picture that was the hardest to get? In the end, I always choose the image that brings me an emotion, an image where I’ve felt elated or tearful …
It was my brother’s birthday recently, and as he doesn’t drive, I took him on a trip to a place that would normally be hard for him to get to. RSPB Newport Wetlands sits, as its name suggests, on the South coast of Wales near Newport. It’s an extensive area of… well, wetlands, those places of reedbed and marsh that we dismiss as useless only if we don’t understand their importance. Trips to wetlands, especially on very windy days with …
It’s the thing that everyone is noticing but nobody is talking about. Where have all the bees gone? I have a small garden, full of bee-friendly flowers. Two years ago my plants had so many bees on them that the very air seemed to vibrate. Yesterday I spent three hours working in my garden. I saw four bees. Four. And it’s not just me. Up and down the country people have been saying the same thing to me. Try it …
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