Author: Daniel Greenwood

Landscape photographer with a focus on woods and trees, fungi, and macro photography

Macro Monday: there’s a parasitic wasp in my camomile tea

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

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Macro Monday 27th April 2020

It’s true that I started last week’s post with a parasitic wasp in my living room. That phrase is enough to make most of the UK faint. This week it happened again. But rest assured, there are other species to enjoy this week.

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When I see an insect trapped indoors, I am the sort of person who needs to try and let them all out before being able to sleep at night. I accept that is probably a compulsive behaviour reflecting an anxiety disorder. In this instance I didn’t get the chance. I went to drink from my camomile tea, dear reader, and there was a small insect floating in the water.

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I plucked the insect out of my tea and it lay perfectly splayed on my fingertip. It was a tiny ichneumon wasp, a group of insects which I went into more detail about last week. As it dried out its beautiful form began to appear. I found a piece of paper and placed it on the white surface. My cameras are now living in the living room so they were close by and I took a few snaps. It was a beautiful specimen. I am not intending to try and identify it because I will probably get told off by the local Hymenopterist via iRecord.

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My time in the garden in the past week has largely been spent chasing this small bee around. It’s probably a male blue mason bee with the Latin name of Osmia caerulescens. Another book is telling me (not literally) that it’s Osmia leaiana. They have large green-blue eyes and zip around for a while before settling down on a hot surface like a cat in a sun patch.

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To say this tiny solitary bee gave me the run around is probably understatement of the lockdown era next to ‘drinking disinfectant will not help you’.

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The bee liked to rest just long enough on a surface for me to get there. I had to approach it with exactly the right camera settings and focus on my lens to be able to get a decent photo. The satisfaction of getting a decent image was massive. Little wins and all that.

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I think this is a female blue mason bee having a bit of a rest on the roof of the logstore. Safe to say the highlights of the past six weeks in many ways have been getting an in-focus photograph of an insect like this.

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The internet is awash with stunning photos of jumping spiders. They are cute and fluffy with massive cartoon eyes. This was the best attempt I made at getting something in focus. I don’t believe in taking them out of the wild for a photography shoot – the ichneumon wasp doesn’t count! – so I am trying to get them in focus in the wilds of my woodstore shelf roof. If there is any type of spider that will help people get over a fear of spiders, it should be this one.

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My car hasn’t moved very much in the past 6 weeks but it’s proving useful for insects basking in the afternoon sun. This mint moth was doing just that on the bonnet.

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The biggest surprise in the garden this week was spotted early one morning before I started work. On the side of a hexagonal flower pot I noticed some unusual wing shapes. I realised it was an insect and nipped inside to get my camera. It was in the shade and temperatures were only just rising. It was a mayfly, one of 51 species in the UK. I know very little about this group of insects other than that they appear en-masse over rivers and that they only live for one day. How did it get to my garden? The River Arun is ten minutes walk away but it was a real joy to think it had used my garden to shelter for half its short life.

Thanks for reading.

More macro

#FungiFriday: September shrooms in Scotland, part two – Ben Vrackie

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

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#FungiFriday 25th April 2020

For another week the Covid-19 pandemic is keeping me away from the woods and therefore the shrooms. This fungal breaking news desk has run out of scoops, so it’s more like a sports channel airing classic re-runs.

I had been intending to post about some fantastic fungal hiking experiences (sounds weird) from a 2018 visit to Scotland but work and life stopped me. I have three hikes to share with you which should get you through the next three weeks of lockdown. I do hope anyone reading this is doing well and that you’re following the guidance.

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These posts remind me of my uncle Joe Reilly who passed away in November. Joe was a Glaswegian by birth who, along with my aunt Marg, introduced me to some of the most beautiful places the UK has to offer in Perthshire, among so many other gifts. I would visit Marg and Joe in Perthshire as often as I could, often in autumn when going to meet my hiking companion Eddie (seen here) for a jaunt in the Cairngorms.

Joe fell for fungi like I did in recent years and I will always miss his WhatsApp messages with mushrooms he had found on Perthshire walks. We miss his thirst for life terribly but carry it on just as he did.

Last week I was sharing fungi found on a walk around Clunie Wood in Pitlochry.

This week I’m reminiscing about a hike from Pitlochry up to the summit of Ben Vrackie accompanied by my friend Eddie. Below the tree line, a pleasing range of fungi were found.

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The walk leaves the town of Pitlochry and heads up through suburbs. This manicured field had a rowan so heavy with berries it looked like it was falling over. I have never seen so many on one tree.

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The day was warm and while I waited for Eddie to change out of his underlayers behind a tree I scoped out some shrooms in the first piece of woodland we encountered. I’m not sure what this species is. I found them pre-plucked at the side of the path.

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Further up through the woodland this common puffball was sitting among the leaf litter. This has to be one of the most common woodland mushrooms to find in the UK. This is always a good sign of what is to come on a longer walk. Puffballs can be an indicator of a good amount of fungi on the ground.

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The woodland broke into something more open as the moorland and hills approached, with large birch trees growing along the edge of the path. A tree stump held this gathering of yellow staghorn. I asked Eddie if he would help to add something to this pic! Probably one of my fave fungi photos.

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As we ascended towards the winding set of steps that take you to the top of Ben Vrackie, we saw two golden eagles floating above another hill nearby. This was only the second time I’d seen golden eagles in the UK. They are massive!

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The fungi in these areas thins out to small species connected to the habitat and the odd common species which is particularly good at spreading its spores and growing in a range of habitats (stuff like sulphur tuft on dead wood). For those who don’t know, this is heather moorland. Short on trees so not the richest place for fungi. Then again I haven’t spent enough time looking.

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This is a popular walk from Pitlochry. Lots of people were coming and going from the 841m summit of Ben Vrackie. Here is Eddie trying to get some soul signal from the gods. He failed.

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The views north into the Cairngorms were beguiling. Landscape photographers would have appreciated the range of weather available and the clouds which gave extra character to the views. While we sat up here eating lunch, a man and his two sons reached the top. He told them a story of when he had climbed a hill with £200 cash in his pocket. He knew it was a bad idea and half way up the money slipped out of his pocket and away into the landscape. He salvaged £20. His boys told him it had indeed been a bad idea.

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Rain following the River Garry through the valley from Blair Atholl. This photo has been enhanced to bring out the distant peaks and rainfall.

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Rain arriving in the hills.

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Descending back down through the tree line, we took the same path back. It’s interesting how you see things so differently when you walk a single route in another direction. Here was a very large birch polypore, also known as razorstrop fungus. It is a natural controller of birch trees and is possibly one of the easiest species to find.

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On the way back we found what I think is a birch bolete. It was reaching out from the path edge and had already been nibbled on by slugs. A real treat to find something like this.

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It was a pleasant surprise was to find a chantarelle, one of the most sought-after edible fungi. This one had already been plucked (I think).

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I’m really not sure what species these shrooms are, but they were a nice find.

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On the way back we visited this beautiful pub, the Moulin Hotel, with conifer beams holding up a balcony. It dates from the 17th century.

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The rain was coming and going throughout the afternoon. It reminded me why Scotland is so good for fungi. There is a high level of rainfall, large areas of woodland and acidic soils which seem so good for mushrooms.

Next week it’s fungal royalty in the Cairngorms.

Thanks for reading.

More mushrooms

 

Macro Monday: let’s bee thankful for wasps

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

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Macro Monday 20th April 2020

The warm weather in Sussex has fizzled out, replaced by cloud and a quite cool wind. It’s thrown the insect life back under shelter, but for a couple of hot lunchtimes when I nipped out into my garden with the camera and one encounter in my own living room.

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One of the more interesting encounters with the animal kingdom in the past week has been this ichneumon wasp. Like many people who try to photograph these insects, I find it very frustrating. Their diversity reaches several thousand species in the UK (not something we can say often in Britain) but they are so flighty that they’re very difficult to photograph. The best results for me have been when some are distracted on flowers in the carrot family (Umbellifers). Ironically, the inchneumon above was in my living room at midnight! Again, I can see one on the garden window as I type this.

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This is a Nomada bee that is a parasitic species. I had tried earlier that evening to snap some solitary bees and wasps in the garden, but this was the best I could do. In the way that landscape photographers lose their cool over beautiful light entering a valley, I feel the same about species like this and the wasp above. A book that helped me to appreciate that there are people far more passionate about ichneumon wasps is The Snoring Bird by Bernd Heinrich. It’s a biographical account of Heinrich’s life and that of his father who travelled around the world discovering new species. It tells the incredible story of his father’s flight from the Nazis in the Second World War and his attempts to protect his collection.

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Ichneumon wasps are also what made Darwin consider that such is nature’s cruelty, there can be no benevolent God. On a sunnier day I managed to get closer to a very small wasp. That is, I think it’s a wasp. Some solitary wasps are, upon closer inspection, sawflies or other relatives.

This may be news to some people, but we owe our way of life to solitary wasps. Bees, which are crucial to food production, evolved from them about 130million years ago and their heritage is far more ancient. Everyone hates on the common social wasp Vespula vulgaris, but the are many thousands of species that you slander when you say ‘I hate wasps’. As Chris Packham once put it, when asked what is the point of wasps, ‘what is the point of you’!

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Solitary bees are close relatives of wasps. One book I read said that bees evolved when a solitary wasp decided to eat some pollen instead. I’m not sure what species this is. There were a couple flitting around and resting nicely for their close-up.

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It was basking on the yellow leaves of the hedge.

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We have just moved to a new house (it’s quite old) and so I have been watching to see what the unknown plants get up to before removing or replacing anything. This is a geranium that seems quite popular with the local bees. This solitary bee was covered in pollen.

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That hot lunch break (also think I had some hot food) was topped by a seasonal first. I noticed that a hedge in a neighbouring garden had an unusual flight movement around it. It rested to catch some rays and then I could see it was a large red damselfly. Now that is definitely not a wasp.

Thanks for reading.

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#FungiFriday: September shrooms in Scotland, part one: Pitlochry

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment
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Ben Vrackie as seen from Clunie Wood

Fungi Friday 17th April 2020 via September 2018

For another week the Covid-19 pandemic is keeping me away from the woods and therefore the shrooms. To be honest though, my town is so deserted at the moment that I am kind of hoping some shrooms start popping up soon in the paving. Especially considering there is rain coming today.

I had been intending to post about some fantastic fungal hiking experiences (sounds weird) from a 2018 visit to Scotland but work and life stopped me. I have three hikes to share with you which should get you through the next three weeks of lockdown. I do hope anyone reading this is doing well and that you’re following the guidance.

These posts remind me of my uncle Joe Reilly who passed away in November. Joe was a Glaswegian by birth who, along with my aunt Marg, introduced me to some of the most beautiful places the UK has to offer in Perthshire, among so many other gifts. I would visit Marg and Joe in Perthshire as often as I could, often in autumn when going to meet my hiking companion Eddie (seen here) for a jaunt in the Cairngorms. Joe fell for fungi like I did in recent years and I will always miss his WhatsApp messages with mushrooms he had found on Perthshire walks. We miss his thirst for life terribly but carry it on just as he did.

This week I’m reminiscing about a great walk in the wooded hills of Pitlochry.

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The walk was on a Friday afternoon from the door of our guesthouse in Pitlochry but can also be done from Pitlochry railway station. It’s a stunning place, close to the southern border of the Cairngorms National Park. My friend Eddie lives in Glasgow and his journey was a wee bit quicker than mine from Sussex. Above you can see Eddie not at all incongruous in the landscape All these pics are taken with the amazing Canon Powershot G7X MII in RAW format and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

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Scotland has deliciously wet and humid woodlands which in some parts constitute what is affectionately known as ‘Celtic Rainforest’. This is my habitat, the milder temperatures and shadier conditions far better suit my Celtic biology (which is not actually something that exists in Science).

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These birch trees were host to large hoof fungus brackets and many foliose lichens. These are commonly found on the acidic soils of heather moorland that covers so much of the Scottish Highlands.

These dead standing trees are a vital source of biodiversity in woodlands. They are the thing we have lost but are slowly, very slowly, returning to the landscape thanks to sensitive management.

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In Clunie Wood I found my first ever jelly babies. These are a bizarre species that do look like the sweets. They were growing in large numbers under shade in a wet area alongside the path.

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At the edge of a plantation we found a huge fly agaric.

Here is Eddie getting a pic which gives a sense of scale. September seems a good month for fly agaric in the Highlands of Scotland.

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The conditions were perfect for fungi and these beautiful bonnet mushrooms were alongside lichens on a tree stump.

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This quite hilarious clump of mushrooms (they were growing from one small stump… had to be there) are probably a type of honey fungus described in Latin as Oystoyae.

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This cheeky slime mould was another sign of the exceptional conditions with the mixture of broadleaf woodland and conifer plantation providing lots of moisture.

I always think orange peel fungus is some kind of plastic pollution. Having worked in urban nature conservation it reminds me of litter picks pulling old bits of traffic cone out of the soil!

At the edge of the woodland the beautiful heather moorland appears and views expand into the Grampian Mountains of the Cairngorms National Park.

Thanks for reading and keep dreaming!

More mushrooms

Macro Monday: riding the silver carpet

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

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Macro Monday 13th April 2020

Happy Easter to both of my readers. Hope you and your loved ones are well and that the social distancing is proving manageable. Apologies if this is appearing twice, I was so prepared that I accidentally scheduled an unfinished version of this three days early.

The temperatures have entered the insect realm now and what was tentative in making an appearance in recent weeks is now flying around on its in-built magic carpet. More of those later.

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I have been trying out a new toy, a diffuser for my flashgun. I bought it on Ebay for less than a fiver and it so far has made a massive difference. All the images seen here have been taken with the combination above. It looks hilarious. I’m generally using my Nikon D5600 and Sigma 105mm macro at the moment when nipping out into my small garden at lunch times. It has a crop-sensor which crunches the megapixels into a smaller image, excellent for macro. Attached to the front is a Raynox macro attachment which gives extra magnification.

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More good news. After three years of trying at three different properties a red mason bee has finally found my bee hotel to be sufficient accommodation. Expect to see more of them as the spring progresses and I develop my lurking technique. The key I’ve found is that the location of the bee hotel recieves almost constant direct sun and faces south. Even if it faces south but the available sun sometimes gets blocked, it probably isn’t good enough.

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This is the single greatest insect hotel I’ve ever seen. It belongs to a forestry academic in the Czech Republic on the farm where he lives in Bohemia. It’s about 6ft high and has logs, bricks and lots of clay which many insects love. I spent about an hour lurking around it one warm August morning and the diversity of insect life on it blew my mind. This is what I would some day like to construct for myself. But in the meantime the typical shop-bought bee hotel will have to do.

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I’ve been spending more time hanging around my stachys plant and it keeps coming up with the goods. God only knows what it will be like when it flowers. I could probably do a whole blogpost about it. It’s da bomb. It has the common name of lamb’s ear which is perfect for this time of year. It’s also known as silver carpet (more like magic carpet). This is a groundbug that was perched on a leaf tip, perhaps it’s a birch catkin bug.

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Deeper within the silver carpet I found a capsid bug climbing vertically up through the plant. It took lots of attempts to get this picture. I love the labyrinthine or cave-like feel.

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I’ve recently re-watched The Little Mermaid and this empty spider skin or casing looks to me like one of the lost souls held by Ursula at the bottom of the sea! Those eyes are haunting.

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I’ve been pushing the extreme close-ups to the limit of my equipment. This insect looks somewhat like a relative of a mosquito or gnat. It was absolutely miniscule, barely visible to the naked eye.

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Most triumphant aphid of the week is this character here, claiming the sliver-carpet for itself. I read once that aphids can be carried across continents by sudden upsurges in windflow that draw them up into the sky and then, who knows.

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I’ve also ventured further into the back of the garden where it’s cooler and there are different plants growing. This leafhopper made a lovely contrast with the velvety leaves that are unfurling in the shade. I enjoy the cartoon eyes.

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A few days later I found what I expect are planthoppers in their metamorphic stage, moving from larvae to adult insect.

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This one was incredible up close, like some kind of armoured beast from a sci-fi programme in the early-1990s. I had toys that looked just like this when I was a child.

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Looking equally angry (and rather punk-like) this picture winged fly was poised to take off. As spring progresses, each week will start to show different species of plants and therefore insects. The first butterflies are on the wing now, so let’s see what happens!

Thanks for reading and stay away from each other.

More macro

Here’s a recommended video from a very accomplished macro photorgapher, Thomas Shahan, which was posted this week:

 

 

 

#FungiFriday: a special day in the New Forest

Daniel Greenwood5 Comments

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#FungiFriday 10th April 2020 (via October 2017)

With another week of social distancing and time spent indoors, I am once again recalling a classic mushroom experience. Sorry to disappoint both of my readers, but this does not involve the ingestion of hallucingenic fungi. If I said that on Instagram I would lose probably all my followers. Don’t tar me with the liberty cap brush!

This week I am recalling one of the great days out I’ve had in search of mushrooms to photograph, hot on the heels of last week’s look back at 2019’s highlight. This time I invite you to the New Forest, virtually, and the moment I snapped what I think is the most perfect mushroom scene I have witnessed.

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It was October 2017 and I’d travelled from London by train to Brockenhurst to do a long circular walk from the station, taking in some beautiful ancient woodland, plantation and bits of heath. The New Forest is a National Park in Hampshire, southern England. It is home some of the most intact stretches of semi-natural woodland in Europe. Semi-natural woodland equals mushrooms.

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On arrival the signs were good because the dead wood held smaller shrooms in nice condition, such as this probable bonnet. That’s a mushroom name I wish existed.

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The richer areas of woodland were under beech. You can see that the leaves had already fallen, what can be a bit of a pain for photographing shrooms because they’re all hidden, basically.

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This mushroom seems to dissolve into the background glow of the newly fallen beech leaves.

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Looking for fungi, it’s difficult to ignore the mushroom of the insect world otherwise known as a dor beetle.

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One of the pains of photographing fungi is how much time you have to spend down in the dirt. Upon leaving the first area of woodland on this circular walk, a gang of bonnet mushrooms were poking their heads out from a fence post at head height. This is the kind of thing you see in peak mushroom season.

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The walk left entered more grassy and open woodland at the edge of the heath. This is a good place to find fungi. This Leccinum or birch bolete was pushing the boat out. Half the shroom had already been eaten on the other side by slugs!

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The walk followed on to the edge of Beaulieu Heath. The richest parts of the New Forest are those which don’t suffer from over-grazing. This tawny grisette was in a grassy area of heathland interspersed with oak and birch trees. It should have been an indicator of peak mushroom. It was.

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A metre or so away from the footpath this fly agaric was unmissable. I crouched down in front of it to find the best way to get a photo. A family came out of a cottage across the way and stopped to see what I was doing. ‘Oooh, a magic mushroom!’ they said. I didn’t get into discussing how in fact it is a mushroom that has hallucinogenic tendencies and is consumed for tribal purposes in northern Scandinavia. It should also be considered poisonous as standard.

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Here is the VIP behind the scenes view. A perfect end to a classic mushroom photography experience. Here’s to more special mushroom days in autumn 2020. The way things are going it will probably be another mushroom reminiscence therapy next week.

Thanks for reading. Stay away from each other. Both of you.

More mushrooms

 

Macro Monday: spiders made of felt

Daniel GreenwoodLeave a comment

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Macro Monday 6th April 2020

Phew, I made it to a second Macro Monday post! Also in the past week I’ve put together a macro page on my website showcasing my portfolio of macro work if you’re interested.

The warmer sun of last week gave way to early morning frosts, showers and a very cool breeze. It meant that when the sun did shine, the wildlife came out to play. When the sun went in, most of the insects were too cold to move. Perfect subjects!

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As ever with something like macro, the first steps require ‘getting your eye in’. I found this beautiful snail shell and plopped it on the table. Apparently images of spirals like this can create a feeling of calm.

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On Wednesday I was working from the living room which looks out onto the garden. I lost count of the number of times that queen bees thudded against the glass. This is probably a buff-tailed bumblebee. She was struggling to find the energy to fly away but after a short stint in the sun she took off, with a little help of course.

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One sunny corner of the garden seems to be the best place to look for life. This planthopper was very well camouflaged against this stachys leaf. Up close, you can see how hairy the leaves are, no doubt this is helpful to some smaller insects which can use it to grip. This was probably the most difficult picture to capture because the focus is so shallow in macro and the shape of this insect makes it very difficult.

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This area has some bare soil where the wolf spiders sun themselves. This may not be a wolf spider (planning on buying the spider book soon) but it was using the leaves of winter hellebores as a place of rest. The curves of the leaves can create a lovely effect.

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This spider looks like something from the Muppets Christmas Carol, it is so hairy it’s almost like felt. Obviously its prey wouldn’t see it in the same way.

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Head on, it actually looks rather innocent.  I know a lot of people definitely don’t feel that way, let alone its prey!

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This is a good time to see red mason bees. I usually look for bees by their lagging flight, almost like something hasn’t quite loaded or buffered! These bees are often found in bee houses but as their name suggests they also enjoy the masonry of real houses. I totally fluffed a photo of a hairy-footed flower bee because I made the mistake of lazily relying on my lens’s autofocus. This week we’ve ordered a flowering currant for our garden to ensure there is nectar for them next year (it’s coming in October so don’t have any choice) and it should be easy to get them involved.

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The flowers of the unnamed shrub I mentioned last week have again been a big draw for insects. This flower beetle was so tiny but I still managed to snap this pic of it drinking nectar. Down it! Down it! Down it! Up close you can really see how sugary sweet the stamens appear. Not far off a sugar-coated jelly sweet.

Thanks for reading.

More macro

#FungiFriday: looking back on a mushroom classic

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

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Fungi Friday 3rd April 2020 (or Friday 9th November 2019)

I can’t get out to anywhere that has mushrooms to photograph and we’re also experiencing something of a dry spell in Sussex. That means that this week I’m posting about my fungal highlight of autumn 2019, which took place on Friday 9th November. Consider this a bit of a sporting or cinematic classics TV show, until we’re allowed to venture further and any spring rain arrives. The inconsistent nature of mushroom fruiting bodies means I may have to wheel this out again to keep it going every week.

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It was mid-November with autumn at its peak. The colours of the beech trees were at their most explosive. In the woodlands of the Sussex Weald, there were millions of mushrooms. They seemed to be under every footstep and fruiting from every fallen tree.

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It was clear it was peak mushroom time. The bonnets were out en masse and many leaves were still on the trees. I have come to think that fungi hunting is so much easier before the leaves fall. The leaf litter created by oak and beech is very hefty.

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I would also consider using hazel as an indicator. When those leaves start to yellow and fall, you know it’s going to be more difficult. Winter is on its way.

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Bonnets are some of the best fungi to photograph because they’re often elevated on the limbs of fallen trees, meaning you don’t have to scrabble around on the ground. It’s also a very nice height for a tripod. A tripod gives you the steadiness to use slow shutter speeds which makes it so much easier to take pics in a dark woodland in autumn. Also, mushrooms don’t move!

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What I am looking for in general is a mushroom that can be isolated. A macro lens gives a very shallow depth of field, which means that the focus is thin and the background easily blurs. This kind of thing is perfect. I don’t focus stack images (a complex process of threading images together which have different stages of focus) but this would look really good with every aspect in focus.

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This is also what’s so nice about elevated fungi. You can play around and get some nice bokeh (the circles in the background). This is created by daylight flooding through the leaves – can you see the wash of green? I used a small LED light to light the gills of the bonnets. They look almost like paper or plastic to me. The idea also occurred to me that the white bokeh circles look like the mushrooms, too.

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These are probably more bonnets. Again, taking a photo of the gills underneath can create a really beautiful effect. I could have pulled the bit of dead wood off to reveal the other mushroom but I fundamentally disagree with damaging habitats for the sake of a photo.

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A species I learned last year was buttercap (or at least I think I have). This is said to be a common species. I like the fairytale shape of the stipe as it bulges at the base.

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The woodland was entering peak autumn colour. These beech leaves still held traces of their chlorophyll.

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It was a beautiful day to be in the woods. I can’t tell you how much a woodland stream adds to the overall experience!

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With what is approaching a lake, you’re spoiled rotten.

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Back to the shrooms. I found probably the biggest fungus I have ever seen, though you could argue it is several fruiting bodies fused together. I even added some in-photo text to help explain the situation to you. Very advanced. This is a bracket fungus that looks more like a ray. It’s probably artist’s bracket, a Ganoderma species. Below it you can see some smaller mushrooms, these are all deceivers. They were just about covering the entire area here. It was almost impossible not to step on one. By the way don’t worry that’s my hand not a mushroom burglar’s.

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All in all this was my peak mushroom experience in autumn 2019.

Thanks for reading.

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Macro Monday: wildlife under lockdown

Daniel Greenwood2 Comments

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Macro Monday 30th March 2020

Like 25% of all humans, I am now confined to a new way of living. Work from home if you can and exercise in your garden if you have one. It’s not military arrest, yet. So like many others who are promoting our #NaturalHealthService online I’m starting a weekly Macro Monday blog series.

This is one of the best times of year for photography, the days have just grown longer and the warmer weather means more wildlife is making its way out of the woodwork. Much of the stuff I see with a macro lens literally comes out of the woodwork.

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I’m lucky. I have a small garden, something that is a total privilege when many people do not even have a home. If anyone doesn’t have a garden and wants to see some wildlife during the next few weeks and months, here it is.

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I have been photographing wildlife in the garden attached to the place where I’ve lived for a long time now. Above is a personal favourite, a red mason bee living in a garden gate! For me going on safari is not attractive, because of the cost, the trauma of long-distance travel for both me and the environment, and because if you have a macro lens of any kind, you can see so much close to home. You can appreciate the beauty in the everyday. I think there’s a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote for that.

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Let’s see how this goes, an outlet for the frustrations to come but also a view into the world that will continue its natural cycles despite what us humans do. This week I have had to apologise to neighbours on several occasions for hanging around the hedge with a camera. I have several macro lenses and one of them is quite long and could easily be mistaken for a snooper’s telephoto lens. To the person who is a couple of gardens away but too far for me to apologise, I’m sorry.

The hedge I’ve been hanging around was one I actually intended to remove because it’s quite dominant and I’d prefer a mixed hedge which will support a greater range of insect species. But this hedge has been brimming with life, especially droneflies, a species of hoverfly that look much like a honeybee. Hold on tight:

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You may already have lost count of the amount of images of animals close together with the caption ‘ha, they don’t care a damn about social distancing!’ so I’ll leave that one alone.

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The insects I look out for most of all are the bees. We have over 200 species in the UK and the diversity is astonishing. I think this is a yellow-legged mining bee. I’m not sure why but bees and wasps do seem to be more attractive in their side eyes and the three ocelli on top, also providing optical vision.

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This is probably one of the leafcutter bees but I’m not sure. It was happy to be approached while basking on the shrub that all the insects seemed to enjoy.

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Away from the insects, spiders have a predilection for the wooden fence on one side of the garden in the early morning sun. This zebra jumping spider gave me a right run around. Later that day I actually found one in the house, not the first time, but I think it had squeezed its way under the window.

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Early spring is also a time when spiders are basking in sunny spots on leaves. I bought this stachys flower last year and planted it out, only for it not to really do anything. Since moving house I transplanted it and am hoping it will come to life this year. It’s a member of the dead-nettle family and proves very good for bees.

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Perhaps a little more sinister, this spider looked to me to be eating salt from the soil. I have no ecological basis for that argument other than I know butterflies and other invertebrates do the same.

Thanks for reading.

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#FungiFriday: it’s a mushroom lockdown

Daniel Greenwood1 Comment

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Fungi Friday 27th March 2020

It’s estimated that 25% of people on Earth are now under some social restriction due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the non-human organisms are probably enjoying this hiatus, it’s certainly harder to continually produce these finger-on-the-pulse-docu-drama Fungi Friday posts. This week I confess I have no fungi photos worth sharing. I even sat in the garden just now for half an hour trying to get extreme macro images of a mouldy orange. No word of a lie. Look:

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So the only sensible thing to do is admit defeat – I have no mushroom images to show you from this incredibly sunny and dry week in Sussex. But this blog has only been running since Christmas and so this is a chance for me to spend some of those Fungi Fridays I’d been storing in the mushroom bank.

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In early November I took a walk one Sunday around a nature reserve close to where I live. It’s a mixture of wetland, wet woodland and plantation. I featured some pics from it last week before the powers that be sent us packing. I found a very unusual looking mushroom growing along the path edges in patches of woodchip. This was a new species for me and apparently too for our great nation.

I struggled with some serious mushroom envy at times last year due to lots of images of a blue mushroom that every mycologist and her dog had found. I felt a bit better about it after meeting its cousin, the redlead roundhead, for the first time. This beautiful red shroom is a naturalised species which originates in New Zealand. As the Covid-19 pandemic shows us, things can spread easily around the world if their manner of reproduction is microscopic, airborne and supported by intercontinental human travel. Tree diseases, I’m talkin’ to you!

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I was trying out a new zoom lens on my little mirrorless camera and these funeral bell mushrooms enjoyed their opportunity to show off their poisonousness. Their name should tell you what eating them does. They are very similar to sheathed woodtuft and anyone looking to eat fungi should be very careful when trying to decipher between these two species. I’m just going to flat out discourage that!

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The path edge was also rich in puffballs. The birch log at the side of the photo is path edging, what is sometimes known as a fungi super-highway. These puffballs are quite weird looking but they’re in their prime. I think they probably common puffballs but they could also be pestle puffball, which I believe is a bit larger than this really. 10 points if you can identify which small mammal has nibbled into the hazelnut in the bottom right.

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In another coniferous patch I found this expanse of common funnel mushrooms. I spent several years working in a woodland that housed trooping and clouded funnels in the same areas pretty much every year. But the above was a species I’d only seen once before. Also using a zoom lens made it a lot easier to express the scale of their spread, compared with the narrow depth of field a macro lens provides.

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Next week I’m planning to recap my peak autumn 2019 mushroom experience which I never got round to posting last year. I promise no more mouldy fruit unless it’s aesthetically worth it.

Wishing you well, thanks for reading.

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