honeysuckle

Honeysuckle - Lonicera 

If only I could draw fragrance! 

magenta swallows

Swallows - Hirundo rustica

A pair of swallows return to their nest in my car port every year. According to my neighbors, we're talking about ten years. Summer doesn't officially arrive until they do, in our household. 

gull, gulls, gulls

Goldfinch

Goldfinch - Carduelis carduelis

One of our resident breeding birds here in the UK with over 300,000 territories. Over the last decade Goldfinches have become a more common sight in our gardens, supplementing the food sources of their more usual farmland habitat. Many migrate as far as Spain in the winter, well you would!

Avocet

Avocet - Recurvirostra avosetta

With the coming of war, the great marshes of East Anglia were deliberately flooded to deter the Germans from landing. But not the Avocet, who colonised the extensive wetlands and never left.   

Darling Starlings

Starlings - Sturnus vulgaris

Strangely these wonderful birds accompanied me throughout my academic life. Moving up north, whilst at agricultural college I studied a geology unit at Sunderland Uni and there they were, high above the city. Beguiling me with their shifting delusion or murmuration - group consciousness like schools of fish confusing predators, fascinating.

And later down south in the Eastend, studying Wildlife Conservation at UEL. Small numbers would roost in my rented back garden just off the Romford Road, imitating the constant din of police sirens, extraordinary.

Now in serious decline, a red listed species, another 'miner's canary'. 

The Corvids

Carrion Crow - Corvus corone

Mute Swan

Mute Swan - Cygnus olor

Ox-eyes

Ox-eye daisy - Leucanthemum vulgare

The original "he loves me, he loves not" daisy. The name daisy is derived from 'Day's Eye', so called because of the flowers habit of closing at night and opening with the daylight.

This study was done on location in a wonderful private Warwickshire semi natural meadow in May 2011.   

Gulls

under the umbel - series 2 preview

The Umbelliferae

What design! Over a hundred individual flowers radiating from multiple hollow stems. A single plant can attract over 2000 different species of insect. A big family of edible and fatally poisonous plants with specific species identification keys that include flowering times and aroma.

pheasant - series 2 preview

Pheasant - Phasianus colchicus

Despite their beauty, they are regarded as quite clumsy and stupid. But, restricted to only eight seconds in flight because of those impossible dimension, they more often than not escape my rather keen dogs. That takes skill. Introduced from China, a long time ago, they've now become such a familiar part of the English countryside.

bah - series 2 preview

Sheep - Ovis aries

How we love sheep, I believe because of their neoteny as much as their taste.