Late last week I received a copy of “Bye Bye Blackbird – Worlds Past and Worlds Away” by Eileen Berry, a book containing poetry from her memories or Marshide, Southport through to Northern Sudan. Eileen’s editor, Susan, asked if she could use one of my photographs for the cover a few months ago and until I received an email asking for my address I’d completely forgotten about it. My first ever published photo – brilliant! Susan found the photo from a post [... read rest of post]
I’ve given up trying to get a photo of this chrysalis hatching. I’ve been getting to the car park early and visiting it and a few others like it, to see if I can catch a Comma butterfly emerging but I think this latest damp, cooler spell of weather has effectively stopped them hatching until the sun returns with a bit of warmth. Which is a damn shame as I’m going away for a couple of weeks and they’ll have [... read rest of post]
After spotting a Cinnabar Moth a couple of weeks ago I started looking for the tell tale signs of the yearly invasion and today I found the first signs of the annual ragwort decimation by these tiny Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae) caterpillars. They were only about 1cm long but they were everywhere I looked, marching over their chosen battleground, leaving no Ragwort plant standing. Were they in Queens Park where I’d seen the adult and been looking all week? Were they hell… [... read rest of post]
Following on from my previous attempts at photographing beetles around Queens Park in Bolton I spotted some small dark metallic blue ones, very similar to the Green Dock Beetles I’d photographed a few weeks ago. I only had the ‘small’ camera, Canon Powershot A640, with me but as it turned out this was far more capable of close ups than my EOS 450D although the fact the beetles were hardly moving and I could get about 2cm away from them [... read rest of post]
I know I go through all sorts of clothing and footwear in my sea fishing and walking adventures and although I like browsing through all the outdoor gear shops it’s a pain sometimes as I live in a village a fair distance from any major retailer. Well this month that all changed as just up the road from where I live a shop has opened called trek outdoors which aims to offer a range of quality technical and casual brands, [... read rest of post]
I know when I was a kid, many, many years ago that even though we lived in rural Lancashire there was nothing quiet so fantastic as the summer holidays. Just being outside, in the ‘wild’ as we thought of it then, and then the summer holidays spent in North Wales by the sea. Undoubtedly my interest in all things outdoors stem from those times. How fantastic would it be for an inner city kid to experience the same things I [... read rest of post]
Do I look like a happy chap in the above photo? I think so!!!! After mucking about last year and getting a bit of a taste for Fly Fishing we’re going to get a little more serious about it this year (ie, go more than twice a year) for both fresh and salt water species. As I was a bit rusty to say the least and Wendy a bit less so we went to Mere Beck Fly Fishery which is [... read rest of post]
As we went up to my parents for lunch, a very pleasant yearly gathering of the ‘clan’ myself, Dad and my younger brother took Megan (Mum and Dad’s black Labrador) on a quick walk round the country lanes to tire her out before we sat down for lunch. As usual I took my camera but I utterly failed at the ‘wildlife cameraman’ bit, it wasn’t my fault… even Megan was stunned. As we rounded a bend in the lane running [... read rest of post]
After my jaunt out sea fishing to Lytham last weekend I was hoping to get out over Easter and do a bit more but NO!!!! The weather gods have spoken and this week we have been blessed with wind, ice filled rain and snow blizzards in some areas of the UK. Needless to say I will not be going fishing for a few days until the weather settles down a bit. One good thing is even though the weather has [... read rest of post]
On Thursday I was doing my usual lunchtime walk round Queens Park, Bolton when I came across this, a strange, but probably easier, way to catch the fish i thought… What is actually happening is that the park has been granted some money from the lottery fund and part of the re-development is tidying up the ponds (inside and on the banks) and making them more accessible for everyone, anglers included. So first they have to move the fish out [... read rest of post]
