UK Nature Blog

Mating Kingfishers

For most people a glimpse of one Kingfisher is quite special, but two, together, very together in fact, is extremely unusual. So the Telegraph's report and photograph of Kingfishers mating is quite something.

I saw a Kingfisher just yesterday as it happens, which reassures me that the harsh winter hasn't killed them all off. Apparently (and I've now read this in several places, including the article above) very harsh winters past have decimated populations by 90%, and it then takes a long while for them to recover.

Gull camouflage

An arty shot from the archives today. This is a gull blending into the rocks of the Dorset coast, with only a bit of post-processing to convert to black and white and improve the contrast.

Wren

Whenever I see a Wren, more often than not it's flitting about on a riverbank, or similar, amidst the leaf litter and plants. They seldom stay in one spot for more than a second, and are always partially obscured. At least that's the way it seems when I'm trying to get a photo! The picture above is the best I could do, of a Wren right by the water's edge.

Beautiful Plymouth plankton

Exhibitions at London Zoo and Plymouth's Living Coast are showing off an enthralling series of ultra close up images of plankton taken by Dr Richard Kirby of the University of Plymouth.

Plankton are of course the tiny living organisms, some invisible to the human eye, that fill the seas and often form the bottom of the food chain. The Wikipedia article on plankton notes that 'plankton' is something of a catch-all term for tiny drifting sea organisms, which includes animals, plants and bacteria.

The BBC has an article and a narrated slideshow about the exhibition.

Beautiful birds

The BBC has a gallery of bird photographs from the BirdGuides Photo of the Year 2009 competition. Highly recommended even if only for the incoming Puffin.

Yorkshire bat tower

The Telegraph has a great story about the building of a 20ft tall 'bat tower' near Huddersfield. Designed to mimic the local traditional mill chimneys, it provides a home to many bats and is much more engaging (for fund raising in particular) than simply buying vast quantities of imagination-free bat boxes.

The image above is one of my own night-time bat flashing efforts. See the original post on the photographic technique (ropey as it is).

Mute swan, tucked in and ready for bed

Wildlife in a Suburban Garden

I stumbled across another cracking UK wildlife blog just recently, that's definitely worth a trawl for the variety and excellence of the photography and information: Wildlife in a Suburban Garden. To be honest the chap's either got one hell of a garden or the title doesn't strictly define the limits of his nature hunting. Anyway, he clearly knows his nature and puts a great deal of effort into studying and recording it. Bravo!

2009 Photo highlights, courtesy of Neil

Here's a great set of photographs of UK wildlife from 2009 that I came across, courtesy of Neil's UK Wildlife Blog.

There really are some cracking examples, and he clearly gets about a bit in his pursuit of nature. I shall have to up my game for 2010!

2009 nature review

It's traditional to review the past year at this point, and have lots of top 50 countdowns. Well, on that basis here is a small selection of articles looking back on 2009's wildlife goings on:

• BBC wildlife year in pictures
• East of England wildlife year in review
• The Guardian's take on the weather's impact on wildlife, courtesy of The National Trust
• Wildlife Photographer of the Year