Making the Cut

2022 has been and gone.  As with all years it had it’s highs and lows.  There were many plans hatched that never came to fruition mainly because we spent a fair bit of time having major work done to the house and decorating.  Only one room left to do now so hopefully we will spend more time enjoying ourselves in ’23.  Already we have booked a return to Scotland in June and to celebrate a special anniversary in May we are visiting the Greek island of Corfu which holds some lovely memories from our last trip in 2019.

I’ve been looking through my images from this past year and several, though fairly reasonable, never made it to this blog.  I usually limit myself to a handful of shots per post so only the best will do.  Other times there may be photos taken and I never wrote a post where they could be included.  Let’s have a look at what I found.

In May I went to the west of the County and visited the Cut-off Channel at Stoke Ferry. This Brown Argus (Aricia agestis) posed beautifully

Close up of a newly emerged Emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) with excuvia in the background by my pond

June and the Silver-studded Blues (Plebejus argus) were emerging on the local heath. This is a lovely fresh male but I felt the background a little messy, that’s nature though these are not studio shots

Major bird news of the summer was three pairs of European bee-eaters (Merops apiaster) nesting in a sand quarry just 5 miles from home! This is only the third time this has happened in the UK in recent times. We took a look but photographing these gorgeous, multi coloured birds was difficult due to the distance. I added a 1.4x converter to the 600mm zoom and even with excessive cropping this is the best I could manage!

An unusual butterfly shot from July. This is a Small Skipper (Thymelicus sylvestris) on the conservatory door

A colourful August image, male Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum) by the garden pond

Taken just before the new year. Curlew (Numenius arquata)

One thing I have noticed is that I have been getting a few new followers to this blog, welcome everyone I hope you find things of interest on this site.  Also there has been a few regular bloggers that have suddenly stopped and in some cases their blogs deleted from wp.  Not sure of the reasons but I hope they are still ok.

Let’s hope for a great New Year with lots of lovely subjects to photograph.  Take care all, B.