Blog
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Common / Harbour / Harbor Seals
November 28, 2018
There are a variety of names for this common seal that is widespread across the North Atlantic and Eastern Pacific oceans. Here in the UK it tends to get called the common seal while, it seems, in North America it’s the Harbour / Harbor seal. (I rather suspect the 49th…
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Autumn Toadstool
October 20, 2018
You really know when October has hit full flush as the fungi come out to play. On our walk with the dog I saw this pair of pristine fly agaric (Amanita Muscaria) had burst forth. I took a few photos with my iPhone but it didn’t really do…
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Look again
October 13, 2018
I sometimes need to look at the pictures I’ve taken in a session a more than once to make sure I’ve made the best of them. It usually helps to leave a bit of time so I can be a bit more objective. Today I was doing a bit of…
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Bubble-netting experience
October 8, 2018
If you ask anyone who has seen or wants to see Humpbacks what they would really likely to see then right after ‘breaching’ comes ‘bubble-netting’. Really, I think bubble-netting comes at top of the list but it was really too much to put that one on our wish-list. (We had…
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Back to the rut
October 7, 2018
It’s early October so it must be deer rutting season… probably.
I’ve been observing the Red Deer rut for a good many years, certainly longer than I’ve been photographing it. Richmond Park towards the South Western side of London is one of the great places to watch in nearly 4…
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Introducing a Great Grizzly Mom
September 19, 2018
A further teaser from my recent trip to the Great Bear Rain Forest on Canada’s North West Pacific coast. On a small estuarine inlet with a small river an meandering creeks and during the course of a very wet afternoon with torrential rain we found a number of grizzly bears…
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Flying Humpback Whales
September 12, 2018
This is a bit of a teaser post as we are still travelling and I’m a long way from finished from processing photos from the trip. However, I did want to share a few of the images from another part of our trip to the ‘inside passage’ in British Columbia…
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From the land of the Spirit Bear
September 7, 2018
We are in the midst of of a journey to Canada and have just completed the first leg of the trip to the Great Bear Rainforest on British Columbia’s Pacific West coast. This was a stunning trip with a small but great group of other visitors and a fantastic team…
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Fire and Brimstone…
August 11, 2018
Slight exaggeration, no fire. But it has been dry enough this summer that a spark is all it would take to set the meadows and woodlands alight. Notwithstanding the, I do have a Brimstone butterfly here. I’m rather fond of Brimstones. Probably because they are usually the first butterflies to…
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The end of summer?
August 1, 2018
Today is the 1st August - high summer. But out walking in my usual haunts it feels like the end of summer already. In March we has snow and ice and a delayed spring. Now, and after two months with blue skies and barely any rain until last weekend, it…
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Two ‘new’ species today
July 8, 2018
It’s been super warm this summer in southern England, really the longest hot spell I can remember like this since my childhood and the summer of 1976. Plus I’ve been super busy at work and have had less time to get out photographing. Consequently, this morning I took the dog…
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Spotted some Great Woodpeckers
May 30, 2018
On Sunday, while out walking, I heard the unmistakable chirping chatter of a nest full of Great Spotted Woodpeckers calling for food. After a bit of audio triangulation - that is walking round a stand of oaks I figured out where they were and located the hole. I returned later…
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Young Fallow
May 28, 2018
Yesterday morning, while on a flying visit to Leicestershire, I had the chance to go out for a short walk a tone of my favourite locations - Bradgate Park. It wasn’t really a photography trip so much as a exercise walk for the dog. Nevertheless, along came the camera and…
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More Mr Fox
April 27, 2018
My ‘suburban fox’ project has been ongoing in the background and by that I mean mainly in the dark hours of the night. I’ve been trying to work out where they travel around and through my garden and had guessed wrong a few times. After using a couple of night…
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Spring & Slow-worms
April 21, 2018
Spring has suddenly sprung this week as we have enjoyed a burst of warm weather. I keep an eye out at the time of year for emerging lizards and snakes. Never easy to see unless you know where to look. Earlier this week a large female grass snake (about two…
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A bit more of that spectacular ordinary…
April 16, 2018
The mute swan is a very familiar sight on our rivers, canals and lakes. They are big birds and have a bit of a fearsome reputation (e.g breaking arms) which is partly deserved as they can be very territorial especially when they have young about. I’ve been chased by one…
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Looking at the ordinary…
April 5, 2018
I’m often aware that I overlook the most ordinary of our wildlife, somehow seeing it as less interesting than the less familiar. Sometimes I have to force myself to look afresh.
At the weekend I again visited the Wildfowl and Wetland Trust site in Arundel. It’s feeling like a late…
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Gone, and on our watch…
March 20, 2018
Today, the last male Northern White Rhino (known as ‘Sudan’) died after an illness at the Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya. That’s basically it, a major mammal ‘mega fauna’ species is now effectively extinct because there are just two females left.
And that has happened on our watch.
Photography theme?…
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Day 2 at the Great Crested Grebe house
March 14, 2018
After yesterday’s luck at the lake with Great Crested Grebes I went back again today for a couple of hours and was treated to a repeat performance. After that is sitting in the cold for a couple of hours and getting a bit morose about the light dropping and everything…
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Scouting for Great Crested Grebes…
March 13, 2018
The weather has been pretty poor for a while now. What with a short but vicious cold snap - “the Beast from the East” - at the end of Feb and the usual drab late winter it hasn’t really felt we were anywhere near spring. Today started grey and even…
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Urban Fox II
February 13, 2018
I’m beginning to understand more about the movements of at least one of the local fox near my house. It (not sure if it’s a he or she yet) looks quite young and seems to visit about ever other night, sometimes every night. Timing is not very predictable but ranges…
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Kenya Mini Blog finished
January 18, 2018
More than three months after our return from Kenya I’ve finally finished the mini-blog and sorting, processing and posting of the images from the trip. It has been fun revisiting many of the images and memories of the trip. I hope some of you visiting here may have enjoyed seeing…
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A mid January day…
January 14, 2018
January leading into February can be a dreary time. For some days, we have been locked into oppressively low slate lidded skies that crush the very colour from the day. Coupled with a dampness that seeps into your bones this is not a time to fill you with enthusiasm for…
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One of those (good) days
January 7, 2018
My dog walk yesterday turned out to be a bit of a surprise. The weather wasn’t great, a bit damp, cool but there was a little bit of sun being filtered through light cloud. So it was light enough to warrant carrying my camera. It started nicely when we, well…
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Water Rail First
January 5, 2018
I was in need of a bit of fresh air this afternoon, especially as we had a window of a few hours between one stormy weather system and likely the next one. So I bowled down to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust site at Arundel to see what was about…