There’s another shot of this amorous pair on the “Water Margins” page.

I get some very strange looks from passers-by when they spot me lying on my back amongst the thistles in order to get a shot like this.

Several people have now stopped and asked me to identify the swathes of medium-sized blue flowers (above) that feature so noticeably along almost every roadside verge this summer (2008), particularly in Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset. They’re certainly very abundant, as are Field Scabious, Greater Knapweed, Rosebay Willowherb and a host of others. Not so many wild Poppies around at the moment it seems however.

Grasshoppers and Crickets can be very confusing to identify, if only because they can vary from bright green to dark brown within the same species, while some individuals (though by no means all) may have brightly coloured patterns along their bodies. I’m assuming that this is a Meadow Grasshopper because long ago, I was taught that this species lacks hind-wings, making the fore-wings appear much shorter overall compared to others.

There were a bunch of these little guys sharing the tidal edges with Rock Pipits and Turnstone at Millendreath Beach, Cornwall. They’ve probably moved down to the beach from pasture-land further up the valley just for the winter. They were all pretty busy foraging about in the tidal detritus looking for sand-hoppers and other tasty snacks….All that is, except for this nosey so-and-so who insisted on watching me all the time I was there!

You can buy tubs of dried Mealworms from pet shops and garden centres these days for feeding to the birds, but I tend to find that they don’t like them very much….even in the Winter. On the other hand, they love the live, wriggly-squiggly versions that you can get from a few of the more discerning pet shops or from reptile and amphibian specialists. A deep-rimmed bowl of live Mealworms placed on the bird-table or even on the ground is a real bonus for parent birds of such species as…

From the May Blossom of five or ten years ago to the April Blossom of today to….er….March Blossom in no more than another five years or so….Who knows?

It wont be long before the seven Blue Tit chicks in this nest-box at the top of my garden will want to come out into the big wide world (any minute now in fact). Unfortunately, the Jackdaws are all too aware of this as well and are constantly hanging around up in the trees nearby. One or two of them have even tried sticking their heads into the hole to get a better look!They are very persistent and there can be up to a dozen or more of them just waiting for the moment the first chick ventures…

If you’re out for a walk in the countryside and you suddenly hear what sounds like someone jangling a set of car keys, then it’s probably someone jangling a set of car keys! On the other hand, it could be Mr Corn Bunting sitting high up in some conspicuous position on a telegraph wire or at the very top of a bush rattling off his jingly-jangly song!Most bird books will place this Skylark-coloured reprobate in open farmland where it tends to nest on the ground (though not always), but…

I watched as this Worker Ant repeatedly rubbed the abdomen of this Peach-Potato Aphid (a major vector of virus diseases by the way) until it pulled back its cornicles (I think that’s what those little horn-like things are called) and excreted a tiny droplet of honeydew (look closely and you should be able to see it). I’ve noticed many Ants in my garden this summer actually carrying “cow” Aphids. I think that’s because they’re taking them below ground to…

Arranged like notes on a page of sheet music, this small group of Great Reedmace couldn’t help but catch my eye. However, it was the Victorian artist, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s mistake when he added Reedmace to his famous painting and then called it “Moses in the Bulrushes” that has led to most of the UK’s population still calling them Bulrushes to this day!

This little fella sat still just long enough to let me take this shot on a pretty slow shutter speed.

Remember the wonderfully brilliant Leslie Philips in those terrific old B&W movies, when he used to say “ding-dong!” in that toe-curlingly lounge-lizard way of his if he saw a particularly attractive female? Well the next Buzzard that I’ll feature will probably be the brazen hussy “Bell”….I named her with more than a passing nod to Philips’s iconic line. In fact, if Leslie Philips was actually cast as Buzzard instead of a Lizard, then…

….and the darkest hour is just before dawn