It hasn’t been a good year for me personally. My dad was seriously ill and passed away in July. I spent a lot of the year on the south coast where my dad lived. I did have some breaks from hospital visits which gave me time to go to the beach or visit the local nature reserve at Seaford Head. It’s one of my favourite nature reserves with great views over the Cuckmere valley with the Seven Sisters cliffs as a backdrop.
View of the Seven Sisters from Seaford head
Seaford head is good habitat for Adders – the UK’s only venomus snake. In the summer dog owners are warned about the Adders and the threat they could pose to dogs if they sniff out one of these poisonous snakes. Knowing this was a good place for Adders I was determined to photograph one of these reptiles. It took me a few visits to locate their favourite basking spots. I found and photographed both male and females. On one occasion I was lucky enough to photograph a male and female basking together.
Female Adder on the left and male on the right. You can see the difference in colouration
Seaford head is home to one of the rarest plants in the UK. It’s called Moon Carrot and is quite an unassuming plant. I set out to try and find these plants and photograph them.
Moon Carrot doesn’t look much but it’s one of the UK’s rarest plants
A view down the Cuckmere Valley at high tide
Wildlife
I found and photographed a species of damselfly that I haven’t seen before – a White Legged Damselfly. I found it in a small pond in a Cambridgeshire meadow. I’m going back this summer to see if I can find any again.
White-legged damselfly
I was lucky with one of my visits to Woodwalton Fen. There were seven Cranes quite close so I managed to get a few photos.
Cranes taking off on Woodwalton Fen
On a day out to Devils Dyke I photographed an Adonis Blue butterfly – a species I hadn’t seen before.
Adonis Blue butterfly
While we are still on the subject of butterflies, I saw a gathering of butterflies feeding on minerals found in wet mud. I’ve never seen so many butterflies all in one place before.
Green-veined White butterflies
I’ve photographed Lizards before, but in 2023 I captured an image with four lizards basking together.
Four Lizards basking in the sun together
Calendars 2024
I was lucky enough to have some of my photos included in calendars for 2024.
Fly Agaric appears in the BCN Widlife Trust calendar.
I had three of my images appear in the local town calendar
Star trails over the mortuary chapel – this photo appeared on the cover of the town calendar
Abbey College
The local church
Social Media
My most liked and viewed photo on Facebook in 2023 was one I took on a cold foggy day on the Great Fen.
A cold foggy day on the Great Fen – a popular image on facebook
The three most popular images on Flickr:-
A preening Swan
A Bank Vole in Cambridgeshire woodland
A Speckled Brown butterfly
This post is dedicated to my dad who passed away in 2023.
The last photo of me and my dad together
I was out on the Great Fen again this morning for my second Stonechat survey of the year. It was a cold crisp winter morning with frost on my car windscreen. I got to site at 10am and finished the survey at 1pm. I didn’t see any Stonechats on my last survey and I thought it would be the same today. Only saw one Stonechat right at the end of the survey. I logged my sighting which was a male bird that had been ringed. I managed to get an out-of-focus record shot of the Stonechat before it flew away.
The Great Fen is situated between Peterborough and Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire and consists of two National Nature reserves – Woodwalton Fen and Holme Fen. The Great Fen is undergoing one of largest restoration projects of its type in Europe. I’m lucky enough to live close to both nature reserves so I decided to become a volunteer wildlife recorder and photographer for the Great Fen. As volunteers we are asked to do various tasks including checking for signs of water voles, harvest mice nests, moth traps, bird and butterfly transects.
This is what I was looking for today. Male Stonechat
It’s that time of year again when mushrooms and other funghi start to appear. There are several woodland locations nearby that are excellent for woodland funghi. Today I visited Monks Wood with my camera and macro lens. The walk through the wood started off gloomy but the sun soon broke through the cloud highlighting the autumn leaves.
I’d heard about Devils Dyke in Cambridgeshire and how good it is for butterflies. The dyke is 10 metres high and runs for 7 miles. I never knew the best location on the dyke for seeing butterflies so when the local butterfly conservation group advertised a free guided butterfly walk I jumped at the opportunity to join them. We started at 11:00am and finished about 02:00pm. The weather was warm and sunny so we were hoping to see lots of butterflies. We weren’t disappointed. It was a great location for butterfly watching and with a butterfly expert on hand we saw several species of butterfly, including Adonis Blue, Dinghy Skipper and Green Hair streaks.
There were plenty of photo opportunities on Devils Dyke
Went for a walk at my local nature reserve today. It was very springlike with a temperature of 16C. Spotted my first butterfly of the year – a Peacock butterfly.
It’s official. 2022 was the hottest year since records began.
A popular wildlife image on Facebook
I spent 8 months deploying a couple of trail cameras at various locations around Cambridgeshire, UK. I found some good spots for Fox activity and produced this film showing the secret life of Foxes.
It’s not often we get cold snaps in the fens. We’ve just had one with temperatures down to -6 C. Along with sub zero temperatures there’s been fog which persisted during the day keeping temperatures well below zero during daylight hours. These types of conditions are ideal for the formation of hoar frost.
The thaw has started at Woodwalton Fen
Fen Photos. 