Daily Photo by Bob Gibbons

Bob Gibbons, a naturalist and ecologist who lives in Dorset, has been sending out photographs every evening since March. These daily emails started “as a service to friends during lockdown” and have become a highlight of our day. Every photograph is intimate, plunging us into a lived moment with such intensity that it really feels as if you’re there, in the encounter. Hats off to Bob for taking the time to share, and thanks to him for letting us publish some our favourites along with his lovely emails.

Daily Photo 1.

Hi everyone,

Since none of us can go very far, I thought it might be just possible that people would enjoy a daily photo from those I’ve taken in the last year. Some are intended to bemusing, some beautiful, some interesting or occasionally more than one of these (or possibly none of them).

You could view it as a wonderful opportunity to see the work of a great photographer (though why would you?), or maybe just that difficult times demand … trivial measures. Some of you will have already seen some of them, but no-one has seen them all.

I thought I’d start with a brief photo-compilation on how the crow family* are reacting to the pandemic.

I hope everyone is surviving these strange times OK.

Bob

* The crow family are also known as the Corvids.

Corvids live in close colonies, so are worried by what they’ve heard through social media and on the inter-nest. No doubt they misheard Covid19 as Corvid19, which clearly rattled them. Rooks, being the most colonial and social, responded quickly by attempting to design a face-mask, though early attempts (pictured above) were too cumbersome and not entirely successful. Meanwhile, a jackdaw responds (below) to the Corvid19 outbreak by panic-collecting toilet paper.

Daily Photo 2.

Hi everyone,

Day 2 is made up of more than one photo, because I just love the poses this bird is adopting. It’s a female common kestrel hovering over a road verge. Two things I love about these are the way that high speed digital photography reveals things you don’t necessarily appreciate by eye; and how the low evening light illuminates her underside plumage beautifully.

Bob

Daily Photo 6.

Hi everyone,

I think this is an extraordinary landscape, part of Dunster from its old deer park. The foreground anthills are, as most people probably know, formed by the yellow meadow ant. A study done some 30 years ago on anthills showed that age and volume were closely correlated – ie the bigger they are the older they are – and these are particularly large and densely spread. Because they’re made from finely ground soil, they drain freely and support different flowers and insects on top compared to the rest of the sward. But interestingly, they also show, when in this density, that the grassland has not been ploughed, harrowed, planted up, neglected or heavily-grazed by cattle for a long time, because all of these activities destroy anthills.

This deer park is not medieval, but was created in its present position in about 1750, and it’s quite likely that these anthills have been forming since then.

Dunster is a wonderful village, perhaps the best-preserved medieval village in Britain, set in a lovely landscape. The tower on the right is Conygar Tower, a listed 18th century folly. I have a modest personal involvement in its history. When I was 11, some older friends involved me in their home-made bomb-making; one of our fine little outreach projects was an attempt to blow up Conygar Tower (come on, we were very young and stupid then….). The bomb made a hole in the supporting earth bank that was a few millimetres larger than itself, so apparently did no damage.

My bomb-making career came to an end soon after when one blew off my hand and part of my knee. Probably a good thing for our built heritage.

Bob

Daily Photo 21.

Hi everyone,

I think these are amongst the most gorgeously elegant birds that I know. This is a black-necked Stilt* feeding along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico in winter, searching for flies, molluscs or other invertebrates. To get close enough to them, I lay face down on the wet beach for about 2 hours, so that eventually they thought of me as piece of ageing jetsam (no comment, please) and largely ignored me.

They often see a potential food item after they’ve passed it, and gracefully turn back to reach it while leaving their legs in place (see picture 322). I’ve put three pictures in, just to show the range of their gymnastic poses.

* Our European Black-winged Stilts are very similar in both plumage and style; I just happen to have better pictures of the American ones.

Bob

Daily Photo 23.

Apart from being a rather attractive bird, the Acorn Woodpecker is also an intriguing and unusual one. They live an essentially communal life with large family groups banded together into greater communities. These communities establish and guard ‘granary trees’, often old pines, in which they drill thousands of holes, into which they carefully fit thousands of acorns, choosing the right-sized hole for each acorn they bring. Naturally, other local species such as jays and squirrels would dearly love to get their beaks or paws on this ready supply of food, so the community appoints a continuous guard roster to alert the group of any intruders.

The main photo shows an adult with acorn, looking for a suitable hole. The secondary photo shows 3 birds from a colony, going about their daily work, rather like monks at a monastery.

They’re found from Oregon southwards to South America.

Bob

Daily Photo 25.

At the risk of being didactic, there are two important things to know about Sea Otters: 1. They are a keystone species, and 2. They are outrageously cute (sorry Kev).

The main picture taken last December, shows a sea otter eating a Sea Urchin, in kelp beds off the Californian Coast, and it is this habit that makes them a keystone species*. If left unchecked, sea urchins devastate kelp beds and much of the life therein, and since 19^th century hunting decimated the sea otter population, sea urchins became super-abundant in places. Sea Otters are coming back, slowly, and are restoring the balance, bringing the kelp beds back to their highly-diverse natural state. Though hunting has ended, Sea Otters still face threats from boat accidents, fishermen (they also eat fish), and, bizarrely, cat parasites from cat litter washed into the sea, as well as their natural shark and Cetacean predators, and they are still classified as Endangered.

The remaining pictures are just there to show how attractive and appealing sea otters can be when their fur is not quite so wet. They do, incidentally, have the densest fur of any mammal at an alleged million or so strands per square inch (huh?).

* A keystone species, in case anyone doesn’t know, is one that has a disproportionate influence on its environment.

Back to Europe from tomorrow.

Bob

Daily Photo 41.

A female mallard with 9 young on the river Stour, just a few hundred yards from me. I went back the next day to count them, but there was no sign of them (that doesn’t mean they had been eaten, just gone out of sight somewhere), and I haven’t seen them since.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 42.

Hi everyone,

A few days ago, I went down to the nearby Longham Lakes, mainly to see if there were any Great-crested Grebes with young. There weren’t, but there was a huge crowd of Swifts feeding over the lakes, maybe 70 – 100 birds. It’s impossible to say where they had come from, as they will travel huge distances – there are records of London birds feeding over the Wash, maybe 90 miles north, for example. Swifts are probably the most aerial birds in the world, spending up to 10 months continuously in the air, only landing to nest, and they can fly in level flight at over 70 mph, so a feeding trip of 100 miles or more is nothing. Because they fly both fast and erratically, they’re not that easy to photograph, but I was helped here as they were flying into a strong wind. There could be a new definition of lockdown, giving you the ability to waste time attempting to photograph swifts in flight!

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 43.

About a decade ago, I spent 2 years researching and photographing a book on the most flowery places in the world. There were some pretty extraordinary places, but actually this is pretty sensational – a whole hillside, maybe a kilometre across and 3-400 metres high, of solid colour from flowers, much nearer to home. The flowers in this beautiful patchwork are Bell Heather, Ling and Western Gorse, with patches of green Bracken and straw-yellow Bristle Bent. The Land in the distance is Wales, just west of Barry, rising up to the Brecon Beacons beyond.

This hillside lies just west of Minehead, and it was where I discovered nature and wild places as a young lad. In those days, it was a deserted wilderness, home to Peregrine Falcons and Ravens. I even discovered an unexploded WW11 bomb up here, which caused enormous excitement to the police, – and my parents, given my existing history with bombs.

Taken late evening, in early August last year.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 44.

Hi everyone,

Although last summer was not a vintage one for either weather or butterflies, it wasn’t bad for either, and there were a few periods when both were wonderful. The attached photo of Vanessid butterflies on a white garden buddleia was taken in Wales in early September, and reminded me of summers long gone. To be honest, I thought we had lost this sort of abundance. Perhaps one benefit of climate change may be an increase in these mobile but warmth-demanding species.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 46.

It seems to me that Siskins have become markedly more common over the last few decades. There is some evidence for this, possibly as a result of more maturing conifer plantations, but in my case I think it’s just that I’ve got better at noticing them.

They’re delightful little birds, like a greenish canary. Although they’re seed-feeders, they only tend to come to bird feeders once their natural food of alders, birches and spruce is depleted, so they rarely come to gardens in the first half of winter.

This was a fortuitous photograph taken when he began feeding on an alder just outside a hide at the Blashford reserve near Ringwood, last winter.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 48.

Bit early tonight as I’m going off to look for glow-worms…

The northern Harrier is the American equivalent of our Hen Harrier, only quite recently split from it. This is a wintering bird, hunting over saltmarsh and coastal scrub in California, late in the evening, with a departing storm ebbing away to the east behind it. In fact, they’ll hunt on until dusk, sometimes catching bats if they get the chance, though they’re mainly diurnal, taking birds and mammals by surprise with their low approach. Apparently, they also have remarkable hearing, like an Owl, picking up the presence of their prey before they see it.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 52.

Hi everyone,

The bee-killer is one of the larger of the solitary* wasps in Britain  They live in dry sandy areas, mainly in the south but are steadily spreading northwards. The males gather together at the start of the season in a sort of lek, rather like, say, Black Grouse, to sort out who mates with which female, but after that they contribute more or less nothing to bee-wolf family life. The female, by contrast, works non-stop. She excavates a tunnel which can be a metre long, with 30 or more chambers, each of which she fills with up to 6 paralysed honey bee workers. As they say “ you do the math” – that’s a lot of bees per female, and there could be hundreds of females in a colony*.

The photo shows the female bringing in a paralysed bee, in flight; they’re quite unpredictable as they come in to the nest with the bee, dipping and weaving – my guess is that they’re more vulnerable to bird predators at this stage as they’re larger and slower, and this is an adaptation to that. It makes them harder to photograph, too. The second photo shows a female dragging the bee into the nest. 

With best wishes

Bob

*Though called solitary, solitary bees and wasps are frequently colonial but they don’t have the strict social structure of honey bees and common wasps.

Daily Photo 55.

It’s a curious thing: Skylarks are rather undistinguished birds with little colour or distinctiveness; their song verges on the monotonous, and yet…. we all love them, and they are deeply embedded in our culture. I think it’s that habit of singing from so high up, on and on, and almost always in places where you want enjoy being – open flowery downland, coastal pastures, and wide grassy plains.

I chose this composition from several because I like the relationship with the clouds, and it gives a little hint of the “lark ascending’ as it climbs out of the picture.

With best wishes

Bob

Daily Photo 57.

Until relatively recently, I had quite a few friends who had Spotted Flycatchers nesting in their garden, but now I only have one that I know of (and no, it’s not because I’ve fallen out with all the friends). David and Sarah not only have a lovely large flowery partially wild garden, but they also live next to an unspoilt part of the Allen floodplain, so they’re in ideal Flycatcher habitat, and this is where these photos were taken.

Sadly, this anecdotal decline is borne out by the known figures – there has been a decline of about 90% in Spotted Flycatcher numbers since 1970. It’s not fully understood why, but is almost certain to be a combination of difficulties on their annual migration, and the way in which we’ve drastically changed our countryside over this period, including the widespread use of pesticides such as Neonicotinioids.

The photos show a parent bringing insects to the young in the nest – the moth is a Vapourer Moth – and the two parents exhibiting pair-bonding with the male feeding the female – the flycatcher equivalent of a cuddle, I guess.

Bob

Daily Photo 57.

Hi everyone

One of the chalk streams near here has a beautiful peaceful upper valley towards the source which is ideal for Barn Owls, with large areas of rough flowery grassland, sympathetic landowners, and plenty of barns. I’ve been there on four or five evenings recently, and never failed to see at least one owl; on the last occasion, I had walked from the car to a good viewpoint, looked over the hedge, and was immediately greeted by not one but two owls flying towards me. They have been starting surprisingly early, with my earliest sighting being at 7.30 pm in full sunshine, but there is no routine and they’re impossible to predict.

Barn Owls are charismatic and even somewhat addictive birds, drawing you into their crepuscular world with their grace, beauty and ghost-like style. Some friends, who go out regularly looking for them, describe an evening without owls as invoking ‘irritable owl syndrome’!

Best wishes

Bob

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When Bob is up and running again, you might want to join one of his nature tours: naturalhistorytravel.co.uk