Top Five Insects I’ve Seen – #1 – The Ruby-tailed wasp (Chrysis sp. or family Chrysididae)

As if you didn’t know it’d be a wasp! But look at it. It’s the wasp I show people to use as a crowbar to talk about wasp diversity. The first thing people who don’t know wasps say when you show them this little beauty, or any of their family, the chrysididae, is “Is that

Top Five Insects I’ve Seen – #2 – The Thick-Legged Flower Beetle (Oedemera nobilis)

I’ma give ya some behind the scenes! Curating lists like this can be difficult. Because if I’d just picked my favourites you would have had four wasps and a beetle, each article would have been 100 words and as many images long and even fewer people would have cared. If I’d picked your favourites you

Top 5 Insects I’ve Seen – #3 – The Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae)

I hadn’t actually seen one of these until only a couple of months ago. Not their adult, flying form anyway. But when you see this beautiful vamp spread its wings it truly is something to behold. Seeing it Unfold its seemingly blood-stained black cape to reveal a bold red lining beneath. This moth is fashion

Top Five Insects I’ve Seen – #4 – The Rose Chafer (Cetonia aurata)

I was initially going to write a list of top five most striking UK insects but alas when I actually put grey matter to the task I realised the list would be mostly, if not exclusively, beetles. Beetles, the order coleoptera, are a huge group. Of all the species described in the world somewhere around

Top Five Insects I’ve Seen – #5 – The Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena fulva)

The Andrena genus of bees is astounding! These are the bees you are most likely to see around May-early June before the honeybees really kick off their hives. If you’ve ever been out on a warm, sunny day in April and seen lots of bees in the air, the bulk of them will be Andrenids.

Caturday Special: The Sand Cat, Felis margarita

The sandcat, one of the cutest and most amazing cats on the planet. This small, adorable bundle of fluff has been known to eat desert monitor lizards its own size and venomous snakes – although mostly it eats small rodents, lizards, birds and insects. They rarely drink, using their efficient kidneys to obtain moisture from their prey. They’re just unbelievable, something this cute should not be so tough but they are hard as nails and can teach us a lot about how we should adapt to our environment rather than unsustainably developing techniques and technologies that force our environment to adapt to us.

Be more sandcat.

Is That a Wasp? A Simple Wasp Identification Guide

A short and simple guide, with lots of pictures, of how you can try and tell what’s a wasp from what isn’t. Also a simple description of how you will certainly fail!

#WaspFlower – Walk 1 – A Gallery

The photographic results of my first major walk attempting to find wasps on flowers for the Big Wasp Survey. I found more than just wasps and so we have beautiful galleries of wasps, beetles, bees, flies, flowers and others!

Fresh as a Daisy: On Flowers

A look at the beautiful and enigmatic angiosperms – the flowering plants. Now dominant among our plant life it is hard to believe that they are, evolutionarily speaking, quite new on the block – being only around 120 million years old with larger trees being only around 60-70 million years old! Yet they dominate our plant landscape, provide us with the bulk of our food and have changed life itself.

#WaspFlower – Join the Photo Challenge FOR SCIENCE!

A short article for The Big Wasp Survey 2021 where they are looking for photographs of wasps on flowers – hashtag them on instagram or twitter with #WaspFlower (and #WaspLove, of course) to join in this wonderful citizen science project.