Nobby, our bug expert, is adamant that, in his next life, he’s definitely going to come back as a Bonking Beetle…He reckons it’s all they ever do!

Totally picturesque, but almost completely devoid of visitors during all the bad winter weather.

….Just like being at a MacRonald’s, but with an infinitely more nutritious offering on the menu!

….or “Larry” to his mates.

As the extraordinary weather continues right across the West and North-West of Britain with only the briefest of respites punctuating an otherwise desperately miserable time for so many people, ten of the others are now helping out with bits and pieces in some of the foulest of conditions to hit the UK in living memory.

Following on from the “Baz” item below, Jenny H (in Dublin) and a Mr. T (no, not that one I don’t think) have taken the time to e-mail me to ask about my Buzzards….Well, they’re not actually “my” Buzzards, but I have studied them for a long time and have even given them all names (for ease of identification). Buzzards are all different in their plumage, personality and behaviour traits and I’ve grown to know this bunch of feathered reprobates…

Ok, birds yes, flowers alright-ish,, but insects are definitely not my strong point! Still, I “think” that this is a Buff-Tailed Bumble Bee (Bombus terrestris) and I took this shot this evening (18th February) after it had flown into the bedroom and settled on the lamp-shade. I’ve been seeing several of the White-Tailed variety (B. lucorum) through the winter (and one Yellow-Banded (B. hortorum), but this fantastic little creature has no right being out and about before April!…

“Camp” as in “bell” I guess (campanology etc) and, judging by the look of these bell-shaped flowers, I should imagine that they’re a fairly close relative of the European Bellflower, a pretty blue wildflower found locally across the South and South-West of the UK and pictured elsewhere on my websites I think. I’ve put another shot of this flower on the “Garden” page.

I like to grow a reasonable amount of Phlox in the garden because the flowers are such a favourite of Butterflies and Bees. They can also grow so prolifically that they begin to take over entire sections of your garden if you’re not careful….A bit like Nettles and Buttercups if, like me, you like to mix wild stuff in with the cultivated.I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere about the time I helped one of the Cotswold’s A-list celebrities to remove a couple of Roe Deer from…

A rather fuzzy digital SLR photograph of an old print of Chloe (aka Chlo-bags) taken somewhere in the Lake District circa 1987. I’ll dig out a much better effort sometime, as I do have more than a hundred forty-page albums, each crammed full with my old photos….and I’m not even beginning to count the thousands of slides I have stored away in various boxes, many of which I took at folk gigs and rock concerts or while I was in the military. A slightly spooky thing where Chloe…

This is a better image than the one above, but I’ll keep that there anyway. I think I’ve already put this on the other site somewhere. It was taken on the Scottish Isle of Jura.

One of the advantages (usually) of having a dog with you if you’re interested in birds and when you’re out and about, is that many species are prepared to come much closer to you than would normally be the case simply because they’re nosy little blighters and want to know what the big four-legged furry thing is up to. This particularly applies to most Corvids and even some species of Raptor and the Chough shown in the picture above was one of a pair who proved to be a lot…

This exquisite little character happens to be one of the UK’s rarest birds and tends to be confined to just one very small area of the South Devon coast. I was down there for about ten days in the summer of 2006 to do all sorts of ranger stuff, including a snap-shot survey of Emberiza cirlus here. I managed to count 41 of them while covering 110 miles of coastal footpaths, bridleways and woodland trails.

You’ve either got it or you ain’t .