Tales from the Riverbank

Tales from the Riverbank

The thin January light seeps through Winter’s brown stems, warming the muddy tones faintly golden. The cold grips my limbs despite three layers, as I sit frozen to the damp riverbank. A Blackbird whispers his subsong in the cool sunlight, practising for when Spring arrives. The water is high, and the river flows fast, eddies…

The Sahara Sun and a Sandpiper

The Sahara Sun and a Sandpiper

Covenham Reservoir, Lincolnshire. The wind, not cold, but constant and fiercely blustery swept across the reservoir, pushing the ducks and geese to seek shelter at one end of the rectangluar stretch of water. The light washed the landscape with a weird sickly orange as Storm Ophelia whipped up Saharan dust and wildfire smoke turning the…

Star Trails and Lizard Tails

Star Trails and Lizard Tails

Breckland. At first glance, arid and inhospitable, with hot, dry sandy soil and prickly gorse, but look closer, and you’ll find that one of the driest areas in England is in fact, teeming with life. Tiny specialised plants creep aross the dusty ground, while twisted, spiny gorse shelters nesting birds. The sharpness of the landscape…

Beautiful Bees

Beautiful Bees

The warm June breeze gently stirs the long grass, and shivers softly through the leaves of the apple tree behind me. Peace rests lightly across the lush garden, and a male Blackbird flutes his signature melody into the clear air. He is perched above where I’m sitting, sharing space together as I wait for the…

Masons and Miners

Masons and Miners

Just a quick update from me, Spring is in full swing now here in South Norfolk. Blue tit’s are nesting in the box on the back of the house, and the Hawthorn hedge at the bottom of the garden was in magnificient full bloom until the rains came over the last two days. Every year…

The Murmuration

The Murmuration

You may have noticed from my Facebook page that I have had the most amazing luck to find a Starling murmuration on my way home from work. If you’ve never witnessed a murmuration before, I strongly suggest you go and see one next Winter as it is one of the most enthralling spectacles in the…

Bushy Park, London

Bushy Park, London

A squadron of green arrows cuts through the blue of the sky, noisy screeches rain down from these lime feathered parakeets. It seems so exotic, and we gawp in touristy awe, but there’s a delight in seeing a parrot fly free when previously I’ve only ever seen them caged. No, I’m not on a foreign…

Blog catch up time

I realise I’ve really neglected my blog recently, instead I’ve just been adding recent photos to my Facebook page, but I’ve been missing writing, so it’s time for a quick update. Since my last blog in late Summer I continued photographing the bees, and had the pleasure of photographing this beautiful Common Carder bee, a…

Honeybees in the pink

Bees are a real running theme for me this year, I just can’t resist the challenge of photographing these beautiful creatures. But they really are tricky to take pictures of. They are constantly moving, even when lapping the nectar from my Sedum plant in the garden, and in macro photography even the tiniest movements make…

Yellow and Green

Oh the exquisite British Summer, hot, sunny and humid for a week or two then back to the dreary drizzle of rain. The slugs in my garden are alarmingly huge this year, and they have eaten their way through most of my bee friendly flowers, but the little patch of Golden Rod I’ve left is…