Lisa has just had a couple of weeks off from her dancing work, which has given us a few chances to get out and about in nature. During the first week we had an early Green Hairstreak on my patch, this was equal the earliest date I have seen this species. We saw it in a brief sunnier spell and unfortunately the butterfly flew deep into the bushes pretty much as soon as we saw it. However, it was great to get one of these beauties so early. Fingers crossed for many more sightings in the next few weeks. This past weekend was spent over in West Sussex. The Friday was spent covering 3 sites h ..read more

 With the wind howling again outside it doesn't seem possible that April is here along with several species of butterfly. A really good walk yesterday along the patch produced 8 different species of butterfly. The day started with my year list on 8 and after the walk, despite seeing 8 species, it was still on 8. However, just after arriving home and the weather was good enough for having lunch in the garden, the list for both the day, and year went up a notch to 9 when a Large White flew across the garden. Below are some of the photos of butterflies, and other creatures I've seen so far i ..read more

 One of the earlier moths to appear each year is the wonderful Small Eggar. My patch happens to hold the only known colonies of this moth on the whole of the South Downs National Park. It is more a moth of the western counties and East Anglia, and was thought to be nearly extinct in Sussex until this local colony appeared in 2017. It very quickly became a very strong colony with around 50 larval webs found in 2020, although numbers have now dropped back a bit from that. In 2022 I found the earliest stage when I came across the egg batch that had been laid on a small Blackthorn sapling. Th ..read more

 With the Adders performing so well for myself and Graham last week, Lisa and I decided to have a go at the weekend to see if they would be as photogenic. The Bog Beacon would also be a new species for her, so there was another reason for making the trip. The only fly in the ointment, was that the weather forecast was not particularly promising, with quite a breeze blowing and only a few sunny intervals. However, as is often the case it seems these days, the forecast was not exactly accurate and there was actually more sunshine than predicted as well as the wind not being as strong as exp ..read more

 With the days getting longer, and warmer, I wanted to get to Abbotts Wood, just on the very slight chance of finding another Large Tortoiseshell. Since 2021 I have found 2 in this large woodland. Of course, it is all down to luck with this species, especially in such a large woodland. Unfortunately, when I arrived I found that the car park was temporarily closed, and although a couple of the roadside lay-bys were vacant, the weather over the past few weeks had left them full of potholes, mud and water and I thought better of it, so onward to another woodland where Large Tortoiseshells ha ..read more

 So far this year I have managed to get to Elmley Nature Reserve twice. Once in January, with David, and then a couple of weeks ago with Lisa. The visit with David was on a very cold day. Unbeknown to us at the time, there were massive delays on the road that day just south of Emley at the junction with the M2. This is ongoing major roadworks which were causing delays of traffic going north of well over an hour. The satnav did know and was sending us down lots of single lane roads, which on that particular day were also very icy. We passed one van that had slid off into a ditch and also s ..read more

 During my 2 week break in Worthing, I managed to have 4 different sessions with the local Sanderling. This is a lovely small wader that I have photographed on a handful of occasions over the years, but not particularly successfully. As their name suggests, Sanderling do like the sand, as that is where their main food supply is. Over in Seaford, the beaches are pebbles, hence, no Sanderling. By studying the tide times it was easy to get to the beach when the sand was showing, and as the beach in Worthing is very close to where Lisa lives it was great to arrive and leave at the right times ..read more

 With our warming climate I often see butterflies in all 12 months of the year. I was on course for this again in 2023, but failed on the final hurdle, with no UK sightings in December. 2024 started, and it was starting to look as though I would actually fail at the first hurdle, as up until the 26th I hadn't seen any at all. Even more frustrating as Matt had actually seen one on January 1st!! On Friday, the 26th, Lisa was heading over to mine for a trip out in the sunshine to hopefully see some Bearded Tits. While I was waiting for her to arrive, I loaded up the car with the camera gear ..read more

 The beautiful Bearded Reedling, most often called the Bearded Tit, is a wonderful bird that lives in the reedbeds. In Summer it is an insect feeder, but in the Winter, when there are few insects to feed upon, they turn to the seed-heads of the Reeds to feed on.  The best time to observe them is on cold, still days when they can be seen feeding in the reedbeds on the seed-heads.  As we have recently had a few really cold days with very light winds I have been searching for these lovely birds, hoping to get some nice photos of them. We have several reedbeds in Sussex where these ..read more

 Towards the end of 2023 I did have a few little trips out and about, with a few different forms of fungi. The best day was in a West Sussex woodland with Lisa where we found several Magpie Inkcaps, a species that had managed to evade me up until that point, despite it being far from rare. On the same walk we did stumble across a couple of other interesting fungi, following on from seeing Parrot Waxcaps for the first time and a lovely display of Porcelain Fungi in East Sussex. Magpie Inkcap. Fly Agaric. Parrot Waxcap. Porcelain Fungi. David and I also had an uneventful day ..read more