Speckled Oak Bush Cricket and full moon

Caught silouhetted against September's full moon, this cricket spent many hours motionless feeding high in the garden brambles.

Migrant Hawker - compound eye

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A close look at the compound eye of a Migrant Hawker photographed in the garden during the week. The individual cells you can see are called ommatidia. The more cells or ommatidia present, the greater insect's compound eye has to resolve images. With patience larger dragonflies can be approached to within millimetres which is what I did to get this close with a macro lense at hand. Compound images create an image from the mosaic created by the ommatidia. Perhaps to get an idea of what a dragonfly is seeing is to look at the enlarge pixels of a digital image in photoshop or paint. Just imagine each pixel is an individual ommatidia.

Autumn Hawker dragonflies

Male Southern Hawker patrolling over the pond

Whilst our summer Damselfly season ended nearly 6 weeks ago, the two large 'common' Hawker dragonflies are still visiting the garden and will continue to until the first frosts arrive. The male Southern Hawker is patrolling singularly, and feeding over the pond in quite poor weather; although importantly, the temperatures are still quite warm. The slightly smaller Migrant Hawker, pictured, was resting and sunning itself on Rose hips on what was a lovely autumn day. The Migrant Hawker is still numerous, feeding in loose groups in the glade of the garden. The macro pictures below show that the tattiness on the wings isn't just wear and tear, but also seems to be from with dried flower and plant debris (probably Hemp Agrimony) where this species will have been hunting.

Pictures below are the Migrant Hawker

Vapourer moth and Summer bugs

It's such a long time since I've added a post - in fact, sadly, I've just about missed the whole of summer. So to sum-up (before winter's here), the first half of summer to mid- July was gloriously hot and sunny in Kent - but then it went decidedly down hill as soon as my kids started their summer holidays. Looking back I can't remember anything too special that visited the garden. But then the standards are high, with insects such as White Admiral and Hornet a fairly regular sight. Likewise birds such as Hobby, Buzzard, Nightingale, and down by the church at least, Spotted Flycatchers still continue to nest. Most of the pictures I took during the summer seemed to be of insects; all common stuff except for one or two I've yet to identify. But let's start with the Vapourer Moth caterpillar (below) found feeding on Dog Rose leaves close to the house during July.



Vapourer Moth caterpillar, probably the highlight of the garden this summer. Unless you count this....


...I believe it's either a Squash bug or a much rarer Box Bug...

...and then, there was also this (below)! I think this could be some kind of Ground Beetle. A mixture of metallic greens and red flanks it was a beautiful insect to see.






A Nusery Web Spider (above) looks awesome under the macro lens.


Azure Damselflies have graced the garden pond into early August.

A micro Moth species.

Resting in the garden pond reeds, a China mark Moth.

Large Red Damselfly with prey.

Female Emperor dragonfly egg-laying on Broadleaf pond weed. This is only the second time this has happened in 10 years here.

Feeding on Meadowsweet pollen and then moving onto unmentionable things, a pair of Longhorn Beetles.


A Speckled Bush Cricket stalking prey on the flower of Greater Spearwort.

A rare visit to the garden and my hand from the unwelcome female Cleg fly.

A common and beautiful Marmalade Hoverfly species.

Azure Damselfly with prey.


An Orb Web spider.

German wasp on blackberries.

A Parasitic wasp gorytes mystaceus with prey.

An, as yet, unidentified fly species.

White-tailed Plover at Dungeness RSPB

With much thanks to my sister who tipped me off that there was a "Mega bird" at Dungeness in the form of a White tailed Plover, I whizzed off down to Dungeness for a good old -fashioned bird watching twitch tonight! When I arrived there, I thought I'd missed it, as the bird had not be seen for an hour. The bird had been hundreds of miles away in Glouceter just the previous day, so chances of seeing it seem very low. Or so I thought.. ..I decided to head back home (with the world-cup final shortly to begin), and started walking back to my car, Suddenly, a stampede of birders seemingly appeared out of no where. I then realised the bird had been refound.

My luck was with me tonight, as I saw this very elegant plover feeding out in the open often in the company of our resident Lapwings.This White-tailed plover should be at home in Iraq, Iran and Russia, but tonight it's thousands of miles away in Kent, much to the admiration of many birders who realise it could well be a once in a life time event.

Purple Heron

Purple Heron skulking around in the Denge Marsh reed bed.

The RSPB at Dungeness have history in the making on the reserve, with a pair of Purple Herons expected to be the first ever to breed in the British Isles. My first and very distant views were made after a early morning start to Dungeness on Satuday morning. The reserve seemed to be alive with birds and I was able to catch-up with some of our more common summer visitors to;


A distant comparison here between the Purple Heron and a larger Grey Heron being pursued by a Lesser Black backed Gull

Whitethroat collecting insects in Gorse

Lesser Whitethroat still calling and proclaiming its territory seems a little late in the year. Usually this is something I usually associate with late April - so it's really a sign of our late spring.

Female Reed bunting - seemingly abundant on the Reserve

Sedge warbler with a collection of bugs ready to delivered back to its nest.

A fine adult male Marsh harrier - one of many individual harriers that can be seen hunting in the vicinity of the reserve.


And finally, a look upwards seemed to give a guarantee of up to 4 Hobbies. Beautiful birds, if only they'd all fly a little closer for the lens!

Blue Tits ready for the jump

Hidden in the shade of Ivy leaves, our Blue Tit box houses a thriving family of fledglings now ready to depart. When not being fed with a near continuous feed of Green caterpillars, the young birds jostle for a better view of the world outside. I'm guessing that within 24 hours, they'll have made the big jump and join many other Blue Tit young already on the wing.