All the photos here are from a couple of lunchtime walks in Chilgrove during September, 2010. I didn’t have a macro lens at this time but the telephoto did well enough for landscapes and closer shots too.

This time of year saw the sunflowers out in abundance and over one hill near our office and down the other side there was a large pumpkin patch ready to be fully utilised for the oncoming Halloween period.

I love seeing insects doing whatever it is they feel compelled to do around plantlife. In later years I would have a very good macro lens for getting far closer to them and capturing far more detail.

Being out of the city also meant there were some insects you don’t normally see such as this Brimstone Butterfly. We tend to only see far more common varieties in our garden but I love the camouflage that has developed over millenia on creatures like this.

As you might imagine, where there are insects or any other small creatures for that matter, there will be birds. The two main types we saw at Chilgrove at this time of the year were the impressive raptors hovering high above before swooping down on mammals and rodents…

…and the unbelievably moronic pheasants. I don’t know how a bird can possibly evolve to both run instantly at the sight of a human yet also see or hear an approaching car and think to itself “I’ll just step out in front for a closer look at that”. A very regular occurrence was turning up at the office or arriving back home and spending a few minutes picking bits of pheasant out from the grille or washing down blood around the wheel arches where another suicidal avian had decided to interrupt the countryside drive.

Not all birds met their ends with automobiles, though. While it was attractive out in the countryside around Chilgrove nature would often remind you that it can also sometimes be a little unsettling too.

The lens used in this case is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM and it’s a fabulous piece of equipment; the bokeh is so dreamily soft. It’s been a while since I really went out and used it a lot and I must try to rectify that.

I can’t tell you what any of the plants in the following pictures are; I know what I find attractive and that’s about the limit of things. There’s a bee in these photos. Do I know what type of bee it is? I do not. It’s only the fact I know enough to type in “green bug” in a search engine that I can tell you that the green bug below is a green shield bug (Palomena prasina).

The following photos were all taken in June 2015 in and around Chichester which is where I was working at the time.