Author Archives: JDO

After a good uninterrupted eight hours of sleep, I woke this morning feeling much better. R is still suffering pretty badly though, so our plans to roller-skate up the Long Mynd had to be put on hold, and we spent … Continued

R and I had to take it pretty easy today, both of us having reacted quite strongly to one of yesterday’s vaccinations. I can’t be sure which, but the nurse did warn us that the pneumonia jab can bring on … Continued

The subsequent team enquiry found that this was the moment when the Tufted Duck routine in the Synchronised Preening (Mixed) event went awry.  In public, team managers were tight-lipped, but one did speak privately to our reporter on condition of … Continued

Flushed with success after finding a Migrant Hawker at Charlecote yesterday, I took myself off to Croome this afternoon to see if there were still any dragons about there. There were, but I should have gone in the morning: by … Continued

You can probably imagine how pleased I was to find this Migrant Hawker this morning, warming up and drying out on the ‘basking fence’ at Charlecote. If you look at the image full-screen, you should be able to make out … Continued

My new ring flash arrived today, so I went for a walk with it and we began getting to know each other. My first impressions are pretty positive: I think it’s fairly obvious that this photo was taken with flash, … Continued

I got myself into a Slough of Despond this morning about the state of our politics, the state of the country generally, and the state of the pandemic. Then I looked out of the window, saw that it was raining, … Continued

This is a final instar Hawthorn Shieldbug nymph – a rather unexpected find in the garden today, given the date. I was a little worried when I spotted him, because he doesn’t have much time to complete his transformation to … Continued

It was a strange kind of day, weather-wise: periods of bright and even warm sunshine, interspersed with bouts of heavy rain. By dodging the showers, and resorting to flash when necessary, I managed to capture some reasonably pleasing bug portraits, … Continued

The observant among you will have spotted this this is a big old fallow buck, and concluded that I didn’t take the photo in my garden. R, whose phone number I’d inadvertently given to the Covid testing people (seriously, don’t … Continued