Stopped in at Moor Copse on the way home today to check out how high the river is. Well, the answer is – VERY! Tidmarsh…
Just had time to look at a box of Venezuelan tachinids sent to me by my good friend Jose Manuel Ayala. There are plenty of…
Today I will be working on a nice little batch of tachinids sent to me my Ruud van der Weele and collected by him in…
Here are the last of Alexandru’s batch of Romanian tachinids, caught in 2010. They spent a long time in alcohol so they are not in…
Last weekend, on a quick (and rather cold) trip to Hartslock, I discovered a 7-spot ladybird that had been attacked by Dinocampus coccinellae, a parasitic wasp.…
Here are some photos from the Dipterist’s Forum Spring field meeting to Denny Wood in the New Forest.
This week has been a good one for deliveries – today I received a parcel from my friend Yves. This is part of a batch…
This week I have been working on a batch of Venezuelan tachinids, kindly sent to me by Manuel Ayala (see right). They are a lovely…
Received a nice little Russian microscope objective today from Haworthiaworld on eBay – a Lomo 8x 0.20 finite (I assume 160/-). I wasn’t expecting much…
I got an unexpected “gift” the other day of a Melles Griot 16x/0.32 160/0.17 microscope objective lens. I had ordered the 10x version (which is…
Have just come back from a lovely, relaxing trip to my parent’s for Christmas … lots of chatting, eating and (a little) drinking, all in…
One of the standard ways to test a macro photography set-up is to photograph a butterfly’s wing and then show the image as a crop…
Here are a few stacks of various fly genitalia – taken at 4x magnification using the Schneider Componon 35mm f4 lens.
Today I went through some of the specimens in my World collection that had been labelled under the siphonine genera (Actia, Borgmeiermyia, Ceromya, Pseudosiphona etc.).…
Here is a stalk-eyed fly from Western Malaysia, taken at about 3x magnification. The equipment was Canon 1000D + Schneider Componon 35mm f4 lens reversed…
It’s not often that you get this close to the very rare and tiny Microsoma exiguum (3mm), Cinochira atra (2mm) & Catharosia pygmaea (4-5mm). I…
Here are a few Pelecotheca (Cryptocladocera) sp. stacks. The technique involves taking about 30 photos, each at a different focal point in the specimen and…
Last Friday I had the pleasure of helping out at the Natural History Museum’s yearly “Science Uncovered” event. For one evening the museum opens its…
Just a few photos from a quick “recon” visit to Swyncombe Down with Rod d’Ayala, ahead of our guided walk for the Reading & District…