About

I know it's become something of a cliché to reflect on childhood encounters, but starting this website really has brought me almost full circle from when I was a kid back in the late fifties. In those days you made your own entertainment and, as a boy, one of the most natural things to do was spending time grubbing around in the garden in search of weird insects such as earwigs and woodlice. I remember watching them and imagining they were alien creatures from another world and, in a way, they were. Distant memories now, but so relevant, because after many years of pursuing my passion for wildlife photography in far-flung destinations, I'm now spending as much of my free time as I can discovering 'small world' nature subjects from around my local area.

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Although my original website tickspics.com is still functional and will eventually be updated, opportunities for adding fresh content were put on hold for nearly two years as a result of the pandemic and associated restrictions on overseas travel. The regulations at the time also curtailed visits to my regular birding sites along the coast and, like many others, I had to restrict my photography interests to what I could find in the garden or close to home.

 

I'd dabbled with macro during trips to tropical rainforest locations but, strangely, it was a genre of nature photography that I'd never given any time to at home apart from the occasional photo of a butterfly in garden. It was a bit of a challenge and I initially found it difficult to adapt, but after I started to find insects that I'd never seen before, I became more interested. I'd always meticulously logged and recorded every species I'd photographed, hundreds of animals and close on a thousand birds, so why should I treat insects any different. As well as identifying them, I needed to understand the taxonomy and learn a bit about their distribution and biology. And that's where the fun began!

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I never realised how many different types of invertebrate species we have in Britain and certainly didn't appreciate how difficult it was going to be to identify them. Whereas I could photograph an unfamiliar bird in the middle of the Amazon jungle or on African plains and be able to identify it relatively easily, that's certainly not the case with insects. How can it prove far more difficult to identify a fly or beetle that I've found in the garden than, for example, a rare South American tyrant flycatcher, but it is.

 

Popular species like butterflies, moths, dragonflies, hoverflies and even spiders, are well covered in various guidebooks

or on specialist websites but, unfortunately, that's rarely the situation when you start looking at the larger, more complex or less popular groups which, by comparison, are very poorly represented. Identification becomes progressively more difficult especially when you start dealing with species that can rarely be identified from photos. There will be many occasions where a particular species can only be deemed 'likely' or 'probable' rather than certain and, as a photographer, that's something you just have to accept. Similarly, with many of the large complicated groups, such as some of the fly or parasitic wasp families, where you may get no further than subfamily or tribe, let alone genus.

 

I guess that a lot of casual observers would be satisfied in just knowing the type of species they've seen, but when you're photographing as many different subjects as I am, they need to be given a name and then recorded and filed. I use Adobe Lightroom Classic where I have an enormous number of hierarchal keywords in systematic order so even when a species can only be deemed 'likely' or identified to a higher taxon level it can still be captioned and filed. It's time consuming, but it's interesting and it works.

 

The problem is, that whether you're trying to understand the taxonomy, identification features, habitat preferences, biology, distribution or anything else where you don't have a specific point of reference, you end up with pages and pages of notes, countless downloaded documents and so many bookmarked websites that, regardless how organised you are, you're swamped with information.

 

It was another reason for starting the website as I now have a record of all the species I've managed to photograph in their respective orders or groups together with any useful information that I've managed to find along the way. There's no point padding out individual species accounts with superfluous detail that can be readily obtained from a book, but for all of those families that are not so well covered I've added varying amounts of information that could prove interesting or useful in the future. In this respect, I would like to note that apart from any specific descriptions relating to identification, all of these accounts have been written by me and, although I've obviously taken care in identifying and categorising species, including seeking expert help when required, there may well be errors or inaccuracies. The same goes with some of the additional information that will inevitably have come from various sources where the detail is sometimes confusing or even contradictory. The website is an ongoing evolving project and, as such, written accounts will be regularly reviewed and corrected or expanded as required. However, if you do notice an error or anomaly, or have a suggestion or comment, then please make contact.

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The main page is near enough in systematic order with the associated albums subdivided as appropriate subject to the size and classification of the species group. In most cases the scientific name of the species takes precedence over any given name except for butterflies and moths, which have traditionally recognised and well-known common names. There are quite a few other familiar species, or indeed groups of species such as grasshoppers or bees for example, that also have common names, but the majority don't. The problem is that these given names can often cause confusion especially when certain respected authors insist on coming up with their own names even though other names are in existence, such that some species can have two or even more names! This is why most entomologists only use the scientific name, simply because it can't be mistaken.

 

Although my focus has now shifted to these 'small world' nature subjects, I've tried to maintain an acceptable balance between, what general wildlife photographers often refer to as 'getting the shot' and the importance of causing least disturbance to both the subject and the habitat.

 

In that respect, I'll end here by saying that I'm not an entomologist in the true sense as my approach is to take photos and worry about identification later. I do not collect specimens, and if that means that the identity can't be confirmed, then so be it. Obviously, it's frustrating to know that you might have seen something scarce or rare that can't be formally accepted, but it's a price I'm happy to pay.