Kilauea: Over the Volcano – Hawai’i Makes New Ground.

When our friends David and Rosie said they wanted to fly over from the U.K. and visit us near Vancouver, my wife Jen and I didn't think it a major leap to keep going west until we reached the Big Island of Hawai'i, well, it wasn't for us... Jen hadn't been well and needed a rest, and David has for a long time wanted to photograph volcanic activity. The Hawaiian Islands it seems have something for everybody.  Sadly, if your holiday is going to be a good one, you now need to book well in advance to ensure affordable flights…

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A Tale of Two Pretties – Gannets and Sandwich Terns.

'It was the best of times, it was the worst of times'. What the Dickens does that mean?... Well, it was 'the best of times' when  I found myself on an Scottish island amongst thousands of nesting gannets totally indifferent to being photographed, allowing a wide angle lens to be placed almost under their beaks and in focus from here to 'almost' infinity - taking infinity to be that strange little 8 lying on its side at the far end of the focusing ring, otherwise known as a lemniscate. 'The worst of times' had already happened a month and a…

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My New Garden Pond – What Showed Up in the First Four Weeks: Dragonflies and Water Boatmen and the Best Way to Photograph Them.

During the summer dragonflies arrive to fly over our garden in numbers - they simply come to feed on insects - taking a break from the hassles that life throws at them when they are hanging around their breeding pond.  I have counted as many as a dozen at any one time doing circuits and bumps, and none could truly be described as resident... But, as soon as our new pond was filled with water, a male instantly took to patrolling and hovering in front of me as I worked; the insistence that this was now his territory was encouraging. Later…

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The Natural Garden – Building a Pond for Wildlife Photography.

I presently tend a mid-sized suburban garden just south of Vancouver; close to the coast and the U.S border, with the climate about as temperate as Canada has to offer. Rarely is the weather extreme and it rains fairly regularly. All things considered, not a bad place to tend a garden, but ours has one glaring oversight... it doesn't have a water feature.. I'm fond of garden ponds and over the years have built several - mostly using  concrete, which usually provides a sense of permanence; but the pond I am presently working on has been dug in soft sandy…

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Belize: Bye-bye Mangroves – Viva Vacation!

On a recent trip to Belize, the mermaids - that would be my wife and daughter, sought out any excuse to immerse themselves in the Caribbean Sea; and my daughter's desire to swim with a whale shark featured prominently on her list of reasons for our visit. It's a rather hopeful wish on her part, but if you don't think big there's not much chance of experiencing anything out of the ordinary. Alice had booked her place on an organised whale shark trip months in advance, and when the day arrives we all make the road trip to get her…

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Belize: Mayan Temples and Howler Monkey Business.

The 17th May 2017 is another beautiful day in Belize and one that turns out to be rather special. Up for an early breakfast with my wife and daughter I eat scrambled eggs and tropical fruits, heaping both onto the same plate to save time. The view however is altogether more subtle than my inelegant attitude towards the functionality of food, and we gaze out across the smooth metallic expanse of the the Caribbean Sea warming from silver to gold as the sun rises. Within half an hour, we are moving along an empty road, the sun now throwing the…

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Belize: The Down Side – Deforestation.

During a recent visit to Belize with my wife and daughter, it was impossible not to appreciate the beauty of the flora and fauna of what many regard as a a sub-tropical paradise. "But, there is something missing", said my wife, "and I'm not sure what it is". I thought about this for while and if I had to put it down to one particular thing, then it would have to be a lack of primary forest. Figures for deforestation are sketchy for Belize and what we believe sometimes depends on where the figures come from - certainly it would…

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Belize: From the Forest to the Sea.

I was recently on holiday in Belize with my wife Jen and daughter Alice, and as usual had nothing to do with selecting either our destination or how we would get there. Jen decided to travel United Airways because they had recently dragged a customer off of a flight to worldwide condemnation. She thought we might get a better deal in the wake of the bad publicity... and we did, along with great treatment from cabin staff, evidently trying to make amends. Our cabin attendant, said that the day before he had told passengers over the intercom, to raise their…

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In Search of the Unexpected Trogon.

Far away and long ago I was filming wildlife close by the small community of Portal in southern Arizona, travelling daily across the border to New Mexico; what I remember most vividly is having to get up an hour earlier each day to be in good time crossing into a later time zone... Getting up early has always been painful to me, especially if I'm missing breakfast! I remember this minor inconvenience better than almost anything about Portal; certainly it wasn't over developed - but maybe now, things have changed... I hope not, because out of the way places are…

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Read more about the article Before We Had Brains 2 – Of Arthropods and Other Things.
Often the size of an insects eyes, give a clue as to how important vision is to them, although it is difficult to imagine quite what an insect see once it has converted the many images that its compound eye sees into something useful.

Before We Had Brains 2 – Of Arthropods and Other Things.

Long before humans developed the brains they have today, a great many other animals had already evolved co-ordinated nerve centres completely effective in directing their everyday lives. In 'Before We Had Brains 1', I considered what might have been our earliest vertebrate ancestor - probably a worm-like creature that lived in the sea; and before that we must have passed through a variety of preceding invertebrate stages - it's been a long road. Almost as extraordinary is that while we were on the evolutionary march from comparative simplicity to our present complexity, many other animals hardly changed at all. Once a…

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