To bee or not to bee?

Nature is full of ingenious solutions to the problem of staying alive. This harmless little hoverfly species Volucella bombylans has chosen the art of mimicry, disguising itself in a bumblebee’s warning stripes to deter predators. — Photographs copyright of Claire Stott/Grey Feather Photography © 2023www.greyfeatherphotography.com If you like what you see, you can follow me…

2022 Highlights – The ‘Bee Garden’

As we wave goodbye to another year and welcome in 2023, it’s the time to look back once again at my own personal highlights from the last twelve months. Top of this list just had to be the success of my ‘bee garden’, a small patch of garden which I transformed into a mini wildflower…

Sighting: Golden Ringed Dragonfly

Having spent some 6 years now living beside the harbour ‘gap’ in Aberystwyth I feel I have come to know the area and it’s inhabitants rather well. Even so there is still the occasional new sighting to surprise me. Whilst the delicate damselflies are a relatively common sight during the heat of the summer I…

Poison paradise

After an absolutely dismal May which was quite literally a wash out, it’s nice to see the return of sunny skies here in Aberystwyth. Thanks in part to all that rain, and the absence so far of the council mowers the wild areas around the harbour have sprung into life providing a habitat for all…

Sighting: Plasterer bee

Most of my time spend photographing is done close to home and exploring the area in and around ‘the gap’. Whilst there is a sense of familiarity here in photographing the same creatures and the same cycles of life each season, there are also occasionally a new sighting, piece of behaviour or encounter to capture…

Ladybird invasion

With the most recent storm bringing harsh winds and torrential downpours my bee garden has now well and truly been decimated, reduced to a few withered and wind battered sticks! Ah well, better luck next year! A few months ago however it was quite the miniature jungle and during a particularly sunny spell in June,…

Celebrating solitary bees

Aberystwyth Castle grounds are always one of my favourite places to visit for their abundance in bird life as well as the vibrant flowers which adorn it’s borders and decorative beds. As mentioned in my previous blog, there is a noticeable lack of cultivated flowers this year as the annuals have not yet been replaced…

Bee happy

With a storm raging outside and rattling the windows what better time to catch up on some editing and look back at some of my photographs captured back in the warmth and calm of summer. Having invested in a prime macro lens earlier in the year much of my attention since has been focused on…