At first sight, the Meadow brown butterfly might seem a little drab – certainly next to its colourful cousins, like the Peacock or the Red Admiral – but the more I have photographed it (particularly fresh specimens) the more I have come to appreciate what a truly beautiful insect it is. The Meadow Brown, Maniola…
I went to Sulawesi, in Indonesia, primarily to visit Tangkoko National Park and see the Black Crested Macaques (Macaca nigra) known locally as Yakis. At the time, I did not possess a macro lens, so the pictures I took of butterflies were mixed, and I did not do anything with them. With the blessing of lockdown,…
So nice to get a bit of sunshine! Last night was freezing! I was just thinking, how long is it til we fly back to Greenland? Forget it! You are not even the right colour. Remember what we look like in our summer outfits? Oh yes, long time yet. I know. I just like to…
Ever wondered what’s inside your favourite bottle of perfume (or after-shave)? How many compounds – fragrance notes – go to make that seductive smell? Turns out that there are lots, maybe 30 or 40 per perfume? It’s all a perfumers (parfumier in French) secret of course; the ‘formula’. But there are thousands of aromatic sources…
I described in my first blog on butterfly eyespots (Conspicuousness or eye-mimicry?) how they can be effective at deterring predators from attacking them, although the jury is still out as to whether this happens because the eyespots are highly conspicuous, startling signals, or whether it is because they genuinely fool predators into thinking that they…
This blog is dedicated to Andreas Kay (1963–2019), a remarkable biologist and natural history photographer, some of whose photographs I have included below. I never met Andreas, but like many people, I followed him on Facebook and marvelled at his photographs documenting the diversity of life in Ecuador. He generously shared over 28,000 of his…
Winter is a time of quiet rebirth. Nature rests and renews itself. Leaves fall and molecules return to the soil; ready to be recycled and reused. There is great beauty in this process of decomposition. The sun stays low in the sky but still provides some warmth on sunny days. A leaf, blown here and…
Insect antennae have been the focus of interest and speculation for as long as people have been observing our six-legged friends. We have seen in previous blogs in this series on Insect Antennae (I, II and III), how they are used for a wide variety of different purposes, from feeding ants, to detecting pheromones and…
Insect antennae often play important roles in courtship and mating. Not just for detecting pheromones, as we saw in the last blog, but also for transferring them, and for stimulating the opposite sex. Antennation – using the antennae to touch any part of the body of another insect – occurs for a variety of reasons…
Adult insects rely on their antennae to detect odours (smells!) which tell them all about what’s happening in their neighbourhood. Whether there is anything to eat nearby; whether there are any members of the opposite sex looking for a partner; who else is about, and so on. They wave their wonderful wands around and pick…
Insect antennae are the most wonderful sense organs. They are both the nostrils and feelers – tactile probes – of insects, and are covered with an array of sensory receptors that can be used to detect a host of different things, including: potential mates, hosts, prey items, oviposition sites and much more. They are used…
In humans, about 10% of us are left-handed. It used to be thought that this was a uniquely human phenomenon – for example, there is no conclusive evidence for genuine handedness in chimpanzees – but surprisingly, it seems that most kangaroos are left-handed! Or to put it more precisely, Eastern grey kangaroos and red kangaroos…
Bees get a lot of good press these days, especially for their role as pollinators. And let’s face it, they deserve it! Hard working, unassuming, attractive and useful! They are almost supplanting those poster boys and girls of the insect world: butterflies! But what about flies? Their press is a mixed bag. To some people…
The equinoctial gales washed up lots of nice kelp onto the beaches of Scarborough this year (below). The piles of seaweed were gradually pushed up the beach by the incoming tides, eventually accumulating beyond the strand-line, where it slowly decays and eventually dries out. This gift from the sea is a wonderful bounty which is…
I was never very good at maths! At school I was put into a form who were taught New Maths. Luckily for me, we had a really great teacher who was able to reveal the mysteries of the subject in a way that made sense and I managed to get an ‘O’ level!. The New…
