Tawny Mining Bees

One of the things I like about the 'Meet Your Neighbours' style of images is the ease with which it is possible to make composite images. Last year I photographed an attractive female Tawny Mining Bee and was keen to show it in comparison to the less striking male. This year I photographed the male and so I am now able to put them together into a single image.

The smaller male is on the left, the female on the right.

PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGE

Emerging Damselflies

Most years I normally manage to find some emerging Large Red Damselflies in late April/early May at one of my local nature reserves. It started off being more luck than judgement but in the last 2-3 years I think I have developed a better understanding of exactly which part of the reserve they prefer to emerge in and when they are most likely to do it. Last week I spent a very enjoyable couple of hours trying to spot them shortly after they climb out of the water while trying to distinguish them from the exuvia (larval cases) of the damselflies that had already emerged. Once I had 'got my eye in' I did manage to find 2 or 3 of the still wet nymphs as they sat on a reed prior to their emergence as adult damselflies.

Here are a couple of images for starters, no doubt more will follow and also some video.

PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

 

In case anyone reading this is not familiar with Large Red Damselflies, here is an adult once its wings have hardened and its colours have developed (photographed in a previous year).

Double Page Spread in BBC Wildlife Magazine

I'm always very pleased to have my images published in BBC Wildlife magazine as it's a magazine I've read on a regular basis since my teens. Back then I remember looking at the photography in the magazine with a mixture of awe and admiration, never did I imagine that one day I would see my own images published in the magazine.

Anyway, I'm particularly pleased to have achieved my first double page spread in BBC Wildlife magazine. It's an image I took last year of a newly emerged Four-Spotted Chaser dragonfly. I took it with my 35mm macro lens which is what gives the image the unusual combination of close-focus and (relatively) wide angle background. It's one of my favourite images and so I'm particularly pleased that they chose this one. They've cropped the image slightly and flipped it horizontally but it still looks very nice in my humble opinion (although the image below is just a quick snap of the magazine so doesn't look great).

PLEASE CLICK TO ENLARGE IMAGES

They also published my image of a mating pair of Common Frogs in the Q&A section. I did well this month!