It was the bravest moorhen I've seen, actually, it was happily pottering around a meter or so from multiple people; normally they seem to give humans a wide berth.
Dedicated macro lens (http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=155&modelid=7400), twin flash gun mounted on the front of the lens (http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=141&modelid=7282), and a fair bit of persistence.
Fantastic! Wow with the snake - that's a gorgeous shot and seeing a snake is just generally a Very Cool Thing. Yay for cute fluffy moorhenlets!
Those poor bees...some of them are absolutely loaded with parasites! The one in the foxglove looks especially unfortunate. *hugs them* (That's a Bombus hortorum by the way...I think the other two are B. terrestris but it's hard to be absolutely certain without seeing their thorax from above.)
There's a few more shots at http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/gallery/photos/2008/06-09 (http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/gallery/photos/2008/06-09) if that aids identification. Are the university garden's people likely to already know their bees have lots of parasites?
Probably not explicitly...some years, in some areas, there are just a lot of parasites about. I don't think there's a great deal you can do about it, unfortunately. :( Apparently if you find a single bee with a heavy parasite load, dunking it in water can make them float off sometimes. But you can hardly run around the gardens doing that to each bee you find!
And yes, the other pictures definitely help! The first also seems to be a hortorum (scruffy, long face, extra yellow band on thorax...) and the last is a terrestris.
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[ edit: apparently not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Coot ]
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Care to give any info about how you got such good macro results?
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Those poor bees...some of them are absolutely loaded with parasites! The one in the foxglove looks especially unfortunate. *hugs them* (That's a Bombus hortorum by the way...I think the other two are B. terrestris but it's hard to be absolutely certain without seeing their thorax from above.)
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And yes, the other pictures definitely help! The first also seems to be a hortorum (scruffy, long face, extra yellow band on thorax...) and the last is a terrestris.
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