In the autumn of 2001, a small discovery was made in Dorset. It was a very small discovery in fact – only around a centimetre long. It was the first sighting of a new bee species, the Ivy mining bee, in Britain. In fact, the Ivy mining bee is so easily overlooked that it was only discovered as a species just over 30 years ago in 1993. So when a friend of mine offered to show me some in Wiltshire, …
Category: New Species
I recently returned from Scotland, having fulfilled a five-year quest to photograph all of Britain’s native breeding butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies. Despite some truly atrocious weather I brought back the precious final pictures of the elusive northern species – the northern damselfly, the northern emerald dragonfly and the azure hawker dragonfly. I also brought back a bad case of Covid-19, which, being a generous type, I promptly gave to my wife. As you can imagine, nipping off for a private …
glossy ibis in Somerset Glossy Ibis The glossy Ibis is another bird that seems to be travelling faster than headline writers and website producers do. It’s undoubtedly a rarity on these shores, a bird more normally associated with Africa than dreary old England. In fact the bird can be seen on every continent except Antarctica, but we tend to think of it (as I’ve seen it) clustered around lakes in the subtropical regions. Yet here was a glossy ibis, comfortably …
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