I have been in love with nature as long as I can remember. Nature photography, birdwatching, lichens, fossils, orchids, mountains, insects, everything else. Conservation, gardening at home, community gardening. I've loved it all.
Glorious Indian Summer weather – 26C – in late September was too good to miss, so I strolled around Wraysbury Lakes in shirtsleeves. I was rewarded with the sight of plenty of Common Blue butterflies (the females brown); Greater Spotted and Green Woodpeckers; Cormorants, Little Egrets, and a Hobby gracefully searching for late dragonflies (Migrant Hawker, Common Darter) in the fine warm weather.
Male (slender, on right, with protruding palps) approaches Female Sheetweb Spider (against green bramble leaf, with round abdomen) cautiously across her web. He wants to mate … but isn’t so keen on ending up as her lunch …
Wild Riverbank – Syon Park from Kew riverside. The whole area floods at spring tides, as all of the lower Thames once did before embankments were built. The wet meadow supports a rich mixture of herbaceous plants, with trees and bushes like Willow and Alder that don’t mind “getting their feet wet”.
A Painted Lady, one of the millions that have flooded across Britain this summer. A bird has had a shot at one of the eyespots on the wing (top of picture), missing the butterfly’s vital organs, and a meal.
Don’t eat me!Emperor moth caterpillar being eaten by ants
Thursley Common scene looking across bog with dead Pines, open lake with Canada geese, encroaching Birch scrub and Pine forest in the distance
Goldfinch atop Pine tree
Tailless Lizard on boardwalkHoney-scented banks of Bell Heather, Gorse, Birch on Thursley CommonBee-Wolf with Bee preySmall Ammophila Sand-wasp, scurrying about in the heather searching for preyThursley Common: managing the heather by mowing irregular stripsBlack-Tailed SkimmerKeeled SkimmerBlack Darter, a tiny dragonflyCommon DarterThursley Common – the sandy paths full of sand-wasps and bee-wolves, the heather full of bees and grasshoppers
Also saw Common Blue Damselfly, Southern Hawker, Emperor Dragonfly.
Meadow Grasshopper in Gunnersbury Triangle’s Anthill MeadowField Grasshopper, on a refugiumCommon Darter female on dried bramble in Picnic MeadowJersey Tiger by pond boardwalk with red underwing; yellow underwing specimens are also visible around the reserve. The underwing colour appears as a startling flash when the insect takes off, but unlike many other moths, grasshoppers and so on which have such deimatic coloration, the Jersey Tiger is conspicuous when it rests. There must be a reason for the polymorphism; perhaps the startle effect works better when a predator has not seen too many insects with a particular underwing colour.
