This Tuesday, Tom and I joined a team of volunteers to tackle some of the invasive plant species at Gordon Park Scenic Reserve, Whanganui. Whilst we were there, we came across a clutch of skink eggs and a number of skinks basking in the sun in a newly-planted area. Gordon Park Scenic Reserve Gordon Park…
Tag: Wildlife
The Horsfield’s Tarsier: The Only Species Found in Borneo & Sumatra
Finding Tarsiers in the Jungle Every night during our stay at Danau Girang Field Centre in Borneo (read about our stay here), we went out into the jungle and explored. We took the following photos over three nights in different locations of three individuals. We couldn’t believe the luck we had in finding them! From…
Into the Jungle: One Week at a Field Research Centre in Borneo
The ecology field season in the Northern Hemisphere was drawing to a close, so Tom and I jumped on a plane and began our annual pilgrimage south. As a perfect break in our journey, we decided to spend a week in Borneo exploring the jungle from a field centre Tom had visited as a university…
The Hazel Dormouse AKA ”The Sleepy One”
Oh, To Sleep! With the number of dusk and dawn bat surveys we’ve undertaken this season approaching 200 between us, it is refreshing to survey dormice once in a while. It seems especially fitting as we have come to identify with the etymology of the word ‘dormouse’ which some sources reckon comes from the Old…
Red Squirrels on Brownsea Island
For some time now, we’ve been meaning to visit the remnant population of native red squirrels on Brownsea Island here in England. Last week, the opportunity finally arrived when a number of bat surveys came up in Poole, the town’s harbour in which Brownsea Island is located. Getting to Brownsea Island During the day between…
Putting a Face to a Sound: The Speckled Bush-cricket
That doesn’t sound like a bat… The majority of our paid work in the UK, especially as of late, is to carry out bat surveys. This involves turning up to a site just before dusk or dawn and listening out for bat echolocations using a special piece of equipment, a bat detector. Bats found in…
On the Road: Stag Beetles (Lucanus cervus)
Setting the Scene Now 250km in to my 1000km charity bike ride; tired, sore and almost at the brow of the last hill of the day, I cycled past a male stag beetle wandering out from the grass verge and heading straight for certain death in the two-way traffic. ‘But I’m so close to the…
Common Wall Lizards Basking in Basque Country
Across a gently flowing stream high in the forested mountains of the Basque Country, Spain, I spotted two basking common European wall lizards (Podarcis muralis). Without hesitation (like any good ecologist) I waded across the water to inspect. These two lizards (photographed at some distance with a 600mm telephoto lens) looked a lot like the…
Sphingids of Spain: The Broad-bordered Bee Hawk-moth
In this post, we want to share with you another beautiful Sphingid, the broad-bordered bee hawk-moth (Hemaris fuciformis). It is nationally scarce in the UK and restricted to small areas, so we were pretty excited to see it in Spain.
Sphingids of Spain: Is That a Hummingbird? No, It’s a Hawk-moth!
You might have noticed that we haven’t been blogging very much recently. The reason for this is because we’ve been on the road travelling through France and Spain. Tom cycled 1000 kilometres from Bristol, UK, to Toulouse, France, over eight days to raise money for Pancreatic Cancer UK in memory of his dad. Tom’s mum…
The Atlantic Puffin: Fun Facts Edition!
Did you know that ‘Puffinus puffinus’ is not the Latin name for any of the three puffin species?
How many Sandeels do you reckon a puffin can hold in its beak at once?
What is the oldest recorded lifespan of an Atlantic puffin on Skomer Island?
Read our blog post to find out. 🙂
Our Local Green Woodpecker Family
We have had the builders in putting up an extension to the house since our last post about our resident female Green Woodpecker. As a result of the building works, we haven’t been able to get into the garden as much as we would normally. We haven’t even been able to hear the ‘yaffling’ of…