Birds, Leps, Observations & Generalities - the images and ramblings of Mark Skevington. Sometimes.

Monday 31 December 2012

Some Stuff What I Saw in 2012

It's the usual end of year dilemma: do I bother putting a review of the year together? Too many highlights (good days out), lowlights (long periods doing nothing much) and non-events (pants mothing!) to do it justice. Last year I did a bit of an A to Z review of the blog over the year with hyperlinks - I haven't got the time or inclination to go that far this year, though I did like the A to Z structure. One thing I have had a lot of in 2012 (relatively) is British ticks ... far too many to review, and difficult to pick put highlights from that lot. So in what is possibly the laziest but most lavishly illustrated end of year effort, here is an A to Z of British ticks I've had this year ..... not in any order of preference, rarity or taxonomy, just alphabetical. Even that is with a bit of poetic licence - seemed a straightforward enough idea at the start!

Adela croesella

Balclutha punctata

Corizus hyoscyami

Dasysyrphus albostriatus

Ectopsocus briggsi

Fly Orchid

Grammoptera ruficornis

Heliophanus flavipes

Isotrias rectifasciana

Chaetorellia jaceae

Salsola kali (Prickly Saltwort) - yes, K was hard

Lauria cylindracea

Marchantia polymorpha

Navelwort Rust

Opsius stactogalus

Phasia hemiptera

Neurigona quadrifasciata

Rhagoletis alternata

Syritta pipiens

Trypetoptera punctulata

Arge ustulata

Aroga velocella

Wild Liquorice

Xysticus cristatus

Yellow-bird's Nest

Zygina angusta (probably!)

Happy New Year to everyone who reads or stumbles on this blog, and here's to a great 2013 in the field.

4 comments:

Bennyboymothman said...

Happy new year Mark, yes what a poor year it was for moths and the small catches continued everytime I trapped, no matter how rich the habitat was. I hope you have a good 2013 with plenty more ticks.
Ben

Skev said...

Cheers Ben - same to you.

Unknown said...

Happy New Year to you Skev and i just wanted to say how much i love reading your blog. As i also live in Leicestershire your blog is of great interest to me.

As a twitcher i wondered what camera would you suggest for taking bird pics? I bought a nikon coolpix 8700 seven or eight years ago with a telephoto lens but have never had much success. The time has come for a new bit of kit, any ideas?

All the best for 2013. :-)



Skev said...

Hello Steve, same to you and thanks for your comments.

As for the camera gear, I guess it depends totally on your budget, whether you want to print/publish the images and you photographic preference. A DSLR body with a decent sized lens will give good results but hammer your wallet, or maybe you could go down the digiscoping route (which I can't advise on as I've never done it). I use a Panasonic Lumix FZ45 bridge type camera which is a pretty good jack of all trades and can be used with add on converters with some success. It's certainly not the best option for bird photography, but does a good enough job for blogging I reckon.