A few colourful photos taken in the last few days:
A couple of pond-related photos: a female beautiful demoiselle, taken during a day out with Lostwithiel U3A Photo Group and a swallow drinking from the pond on David and Sarah's smallholding.
David has had a couple of days out in the last week.  On Saturday he took St Agnes Camera Club out for a day working on macro subjects and at Helston boating lake there are some young tufted ducks.
The range of shapes and colours found in moths is incredible.  It's been a great year for elephant hawkmoths (bottom right) so watch out for their larvae in August/September.  Can you spot the two peppered moths in the photo below?  (Also shown are coxcomb prominent, Chinese character, pale prominent and buff-tip.)
David and Sarah have spent some time away in their motorhome in early summer, they visited the Forest of Bowland, Arnside and Silverdale AONB, The Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria.  David has written articles about wildlife in each of these areas.  Here are just a small number of photos.
Forest of Bowland
Yorkshire Dales (from Ingleton to Wensleydale and Swaledale)
Cumbria (from Kirkby Stephen to Ullswater and the Langdales)
Arnside and Silverdale
David and Sarah have just spent a week away in the Bude and Hartland area of Cornwall and Devon.  One of the birding highlights were the willow tits, quite a rare bird nowadays!  Here are some pics:
In April David is working on a project to photograph garden birds in spring-like situations for calendars and cards.
After returning from the Cairngorms David took some student groups to the Westcountry Wildlife Photography Centre in Devon.  The photo of harvest mice on hogweed cost him dear with a severe burn to his hand caused by hogweed sap: be warned!
In March David led his final trip for Falmouth University students to the Cairngorms.  The trip was a great success with many fantastic photos taken by the students.  It's sad to think that this is the last of these trips but David hopes the trip will continue with other staff leading it.
David has been to Tehidy and St Ives again: dunlin, grey squirrels, scarlet elf cups and black-headed gulls.  It's difficult to know whether the images of black-headed gulls with slow shutter speeds are aesthetic works of art or out of focus rubbish!  If you have an opinion please contact David to let him know.
     
After spending three days in St Ives with students from the Marine and Natural History Photography degree course this week David went back today to get some wide-angle turnstone photos and took a few other pics as well.
On the 2nd of February David visited Penzance.  The early morning high tide coincided with some fairly strong southerly winds and the waves were dramatic.  It was mostly cloudy but a few sunny spells lifted the light enough for a few decent images.
David has been booked to give a talk at Fowey Hotel on 5th of April.  This event is organised by the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature in the build up to the du Maurier Festival.  This engagement will be combined with lunch at the hotel and will end with a book signing.  David will give a talk entitled 'Tales of a Wildlife Photographer', an amusing look at the sort of things he does to capture some of his wildlife images.  If you wish to attend you will need to book your place in advance.  Details should soon be available at:      www.foweyfestival.com
On the 23rd of January David went out in the evening to take photos of Greenburrow engine house at Ding Dong mine.  Unfortunately clouds kept drifting past so he didn't do a very long exposure but here are two photos.  The one which shows the Milky Way (left) was taken with an ISO of 8000 with an aperture of f2.8 and a shutter speed of 30 seconds using a 15mm lens on the Canon 5D Mark IV.  The star trail shot (right) was taken with the same camera and lens but shows a combination of several photos taken on an ISO of 800.  The engine house was lit by a torch and captured in a separate exposure from exactly the same position.
On the 19th of January David travelled to Bodinnick to give a talk to Whitecross and District Gardening Society.  What a lovely, welcoming group of people!  To make the most of the day David spent some time at Par Beach Pool and then took photos of Fowey from Polruan at dusk.
David has re-designed his website: hope you like the new, blue look!
Over the last few days David has been getting out with a few friends taking photos at Penzance, Helston and St Ives, here are a few of the shots he has taken:
Sanderling (with dunlin) at Battery Rocks, Penzance, with a deliberate slow shutter speed to blur the motion a little: Turnstone bathing in St Ives:
Shoveler taking off from Helston Boating Lake: Tufted Duck at Helston Boating Lake (the reflected colour is a yellow conifer which conveniently matches the eye of the bird!):
Purple Sandpiper at Battery Rocks, Penzance, note the slight reddish iridescence to the back of the bird: St Ives at dusk, taken with a 2-stop neutral density graduated filter:
David and Sarah spent much of September visiting the North York Moors and Dark Peak.  David wrote two articles and spent time walking and photographed the landscapes and some wildlife