Wednesday 4 June 2014

Some garden wildlife

This is probably the gardener's worst enemy - the common garden snail Helix Aspersa:


This post has been inspired by one written the other day by my friend David Ford on his blog Wellcome Allotments. In a post illustrated with his characteristically awesome style of photography, David told us about how he deals with slugs and snails on his allotment. I can't hope to match the quality of David's photos, but I think my snails are at least as good as his!


This one was taking a dip in my birdbath when I spotted it - using it as a route to the succulent young leaves of my Bronze Fennel.




I let it get up to the Fennel leaves and have just a little munch before I removed it... it died happy!


Here is a different type of snail, but still attracted by the same plant:




I photographed the same subject with the flash too - it produces a very different effect.


As subjects for wildlife photography go, I think the snail is probably one of the easier ones - it may be a moving target, but never a fast-moving one!

A more welcome and very different sort of creature (and usually a very fast-moving one) is the bee:-


I'll be honest and admit that this particular bee was very lethargic - perhaps tired; perhaps injured (is one of its back legs broken?) - and thus much easier to photograph than you would expect.


This next one is a Hoverfly of some sort; I don't know which. Here it is not hovering, but sitting still, sipping nectar from a cucumber flower.


The fact that bees are in danger and in decline is well-known. The reasons are less uniformly ageed. In the circumstances, the Hoverfly may become more important than hitherto, perhaps eventually replacing the bee as the primary pollinator of our food plants.

11 comments:

  1. Ick snails. I pull so many off my fig trees. I don't know why they love it so much, but this year they really do. They are very nice photos though.

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  2. Read that ! in % people throw snails into there nieghbours garden, but unless thrown over 20 yards they come back. I dance on mine. Hoverflies seem to love fennel had a plant in my last house must plant one up.in this. good photos though..

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  3. The photographs are quite good, I love the small snail on the fennel stem. Well, when photographing snails you at least know that they won't be running away before you set up your camera! I've been trying to photograph a pheasant in my garden for months. Flies away as soon as I approach too close.

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  4. Excellent pictures Mark........mutter mutter mutter.... especially the unusual snail taken with flash,really nice effect I hope you will agree, glad to see some of my advice is put to good use, in the meantime Judi is cooking lots of different meals so I can practice my food photography to achieve your standard

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  5. David does have good advice and you are putting it to good use. Are you using your Lumix?

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    1. Sue, I do use my Lumix, but these photos were not taken with it. I still use the Olympus most often.

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  6. Oh how I hate slugs and snails! They've recently eaten almost all my kales and cabbages :(((

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  7. Really good photographs, Mark. Hope you killed the slug and snails after photographing and of course, welcomed the bumble bee. Maybe you could try cooking some of those slugs and snails in some of that fennel for a treat, hum?

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    1. No, Egretta, I really don't think I could bring myself to eat a garden snail, even if it were cooked in garlic butter!

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  8. The snails are very camera friendly...nice photos. Right now we have none to photograph...guess that's a good thing :)

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  9. Wonderfull shots and plants, greeting from Belgium

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