New species found?!

A forage for marine wildlife specimens during last week's spring tides on the foreshore at St Brides Haven, Pembrokeshire, led my companion, Mike Crutchley, to collect a sample of an encrusting algae from a rockpool. Back in his lab, he noticed a minute creature living in a crack in the red algae. We imaged this using a Zeiss Tessovar and found an interesting creature that the experts are still trying to identify. Each "head" is about 1-2mm across and the best bet is that it is an anemone but which species is not known at the moment.

First photography workshop of 2015

I ran the first photography workshop of 2015 yesterday with Hannah, Adam and Ellis at Dinefwr. It was a crisp and sunny day with great views form the castle and the best scene was in the afternoon when the whole of the fallow deer herd gathered in the valley in front of Newton House.

Zeiss microscope

I have just sent my D810 off to Nikon for the service recall and am looking forward to putting the Easycover on it when it comes back. Also fitted a DIC condenser to the Zeiss Ultraphot microscope I bought a few weeks ago and my friend Mike is modifying the camera tube to be parfocal with the eyepieces as well as making an LED light source. It is time to search out the first flowering snowdrops!

Photography Workshops 2015

This year will see new weekend and short-stay breaks based at Slate Mill Lodge which is only five minutes away from the departure point for Skomer Island. I am in the process of building two hides here, one for photographing kingfishers and the other for woodland birds. A barn owl nests close by and is being seen frequently hunting over the nearby reedbed. A day on Skomer can be combined with another day shooting landscapes or wildlife or a combination of both. See here for details of Slate Mill Lodge http://www.andydavies.info/pages/links_accommodation.html

Ade Owens' Gallery

I've just compiled Ade Owens' gallery which has some wonderfully atmospheric images. Bird in flight shots were his goal and he has really nailed some good ones http://www.andydavies.info/pages/client/ade_owens.html

Captions for this one please?

Sad sight at the Wick on Skomer

A sad sight at the Wick on Wednesday was a dead puffin chick that was dragged out of the burrow by its parent. Some puffins showed interest in the corpse by feeling it with their bills. Interestingly though, the herring gulls didn't take any notice of it.