Some garden wildlife

This is probably the gardener's worst enemy - the common garden snail Helix Aspersa:

This post has been inspired by one written the other day by my friend David Ford on his blog Wellcome Allotments. In a post illustrated with his characteristically awesome style of photography, David told us about how he deals with slugs and snails on his allotment. I can't hope to match the quality of David's photos, but I think my snails are at least as good as his!

This one was taking a dip in my birdbath when I spotted it - using it as a route to the succulent young leaves of my Bronze Fennel.

I let it get up to the Fennel leaves and have just a little munch before I removed it... it died happy!

Here is a different type of snail, but still attracted by the same plant:

I photographed the same subject with the flash too - it produces a very different effect.

As subjects for wildlife photography go, I think the snail is probably one of the easier ones - it may be a moving target, but never a fast-moving one!

A more welcome and very different sort of creature (and usually a very fast-moving one) is the bee:-

I'll be honest and admit that this particular bee was very lethargic - perhaps tired; perhaps injured (is one of its back legs broken?) - and thus much easier to photograph than you would expect.

This next one is a Hoverfly of some sort; I don't know which. Here it is not hovering, but sitting still, sipping nectar from a cucumber flower.



The fact that bees are in danger and in decline is well-known. The reasons are less uniformly ageed. In the circumstances, the Hoverfly may become more important than hitherto, perhaps eventually replacing the bee as the primary pollinator of our food plants.