Standing up for Nature
Tim writes: The Northern Brown Argus occurs across northern Europe and the mountains further south but the form that occurs in Scotland occurs nowhere else. This beautiful (and little-photographed) form has a white spot on the forewing and the under side spots are white without black centres. These features are controlled by a single recessive…
Tim writes: I photographed these wild Scarlet Macaws at Corcovado National Park at the extreme south of Costa Rica on the Pacific coast. They are enormous birds, usually fly round in pairs and show a dazzling display of red, blue and yellow. They are also extremely noisy so usually give you some warning that they…
Tim writes: Like Desert Island Discs, if I had to choose just eight species of bird to be stranded on a desert island with, Nightjar would definitely be on the list. It took me ages but I finally succeeded in finding a nest of my local Nightjars in the Peak District moors. This is quite…
Tim Melling: San Ignacio lagoon on the Pacific coast of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula is one of a small number of lagoons where Grey Whales go to mate and give birth. They feed in the Arctic during the summer months then make a huge migration thousands of miles to reach the breeding lagoons during winter. Baby…
Oscar writes: This was taken at the same place as the Hoatzins and I was particularly pleased to get it as despite seeing these birds last time I was in Peru I couldn’t get close enough for any photos. They are similar size to Canada Geese, but bulkier, and look bizarre with the protruding structure…
Tim writes: As a teenager I remember reading E B Ford’s New Naturalists book on Moths, where this species was on a plate labelled “Moths with Restricted Distributions” that showed fifteen of Britain’s rarest moths. The first moth in this plate was the beautiful Netted Carpet from Windermere. Since that day it is a species…
Oscar writes: Our last 2 days in Peru were spent at the Manu Learning Centre, run by the Crees foundation. Here we spent one afternoon at a small lake and swamp area, where we saw many birds, including these Hoatzins. They are an oddity in the bird world, eating leaves and young birds possessing a…
Tim writes: This photograph looks more like a painting. The colours in the water are reflections from Newcastle’s swing bridge and the surface of the River Tyne was just lightly rippled creating a wobbly mirror effect. The juvenile Kittiwake is almost incidental. Kittiwakes began nesting in Newcastle in the 1960s which was quite a thing…
Oscar writes: While we were watching the Cock-of-the-Rock lek, I spotted some movement in the trees at the back, which turned out to be a troop of Woolly Monkeys moving through the forest. This was a species I never saw during my time in the rainforest in 2014, due to being a too low an…
Tim writes: This was taken on a dull, rainy day at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia where hundreds of thousands of King Penguins breed. This was just one small section of the enormous crowd. I think Salisbury Plain is the second largest King Penguin colony on the planet after St Andrews, just a few miles…