Last weekend I appeared in the Sunday supplement of El País, a leading Spanish national newspaper. It’s an article about people who decided to swap their urban lives for a rural one and the difficulties and challenges that presents. I am very proud to have been asked to be a […]
La Mancha
Swallowtail (Papilio machaon) As I’m on the subject of Swallowtails, I thought I’d do a quick separate entry for another beautiful member of the Papilionidae family, the Swallowtail (Papilio machaon). Again, it’s another big and stunning, eye-catching butterfly, which again, seems to like thistles here. It gets its name from […]
Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius feisthamelii) One of my favourite butterflies here in Spain is the Scarce Swallowtail (Iphiclides podalirius feisthamelii). For one thing, when it flies past you, you can’t miss it. They are a big butterfly, and bright with their tiger-like black stripes on white. The nominate of the […]
Wildlflowers near Porzuna I haven’t been able to get out much this past 10 days due to back pain so I am digging through some old shots of those most colourful wildflowers, or weeds as some people call them, poppies. Found in wasteland, amongst crops, roadsides all around they add […]
Bluethroat female (Luscinia svecica cyanecula) The Bluethroat has been a species that for some reason this year has been more visible than other years. It was rare I saw them before and then this winter…it’s a regular parade of them. Now there really shouldn’t be any reason to discuss the […]
Spanish Sparrow (Passer hispaniolensis) Recently in Hampshire, England a Spanish Sparrow has appeared and causing quite a stir. A twitch it´s called. Twitching is a term used to describe the “pursuit of a previously located bird” according to Wikipedia. Basically when someone sees a bird not normally seen in an […]
Purple Gallinule [Swamphen] (Porphyrio porphyrio), a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. No, I´m not talking about Prince, Squiggle, Symbol or whatever he calls himself. I´m talking about one of the most electric coloured waterfowl, the Purple Swamphen or Gallinule. There are 13 or so subspecies of this bird […]
Egyptian Grasshopper – nymph (Anacridium aegyptium), a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. If it wasn´t for the movement of this wee, green chameleon-like grasshopper I probably would have missed it. It turns out to be a nymph form of the Egyptian Grasshopper (Anacridium augyptium). When in this earlier […]
Las Tablas, a photo by Mike at Sea on Flickr. Recently it has emerged that the waters entering the National Park of the Tablas of Daimiel are contaminated from untreated urban waste water causing widespread destruction of the aquatic plants within the park. Both the WWF and CSIC (the Higher […]
I spent the weekend out at Ruidera Natural Park on the border of Albacete and Ciudad Real and saw a lot of these sublimely coloured Violet Dropwings. Sadly I didn´t bring my camera to where I saw them as we went by canoe and my wifes P+S was set to […]