Author name: Ian Hughes

British Spider Faces

A close up look at spider faces

Spider Face Off So how did an obsession with spider faces begin? When I was 14, my arachnophobic Mum came home from work one late October evening and handed me (the arachnophilic little monster she’d created) a book that she’d spotted in the library. Hallowe’en was approaching, we shared a love of it. Perhaps she […]

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Spiny Seahorse Pocket Notebook

Seahorse and Seagrass

Celebrating Nature The weekend before last we were lucky enough to have a stall at the National Botanical Garden of Wales, as part of the Celebrate Nature event organised by the For the Love of Nature team – what a fabulous bunch of people. It was an amazing event supporting mental health charities, bringing together

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Honey Bee Swarm

Swarm Season

The Joy of Bees Honey bee swarms can occur anytime from mid-spring, through the summer. From my experience, they peak in July and quickly reduce as the month fades, with August swarms quite rare. I’ve always been fascinated by bees and started beekeeping when I was 16. My mentor was my first boss and he

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Dolphin Artwork

Dolphin ID

Porpoisfully looking at Dol-Fins  When we’re lucky enough to see dolphins (or unidentified cetaceans), it’s not always easy to tell which species they are. Sometimes they leap clear or poke their heads out of the water but, more often than not, all we see is a dorsal fin and a bit of back with no

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scarlet malachite beetle pair

A Not So Brief Introduction to the Scarlet Malachite Beetle Project

A Study in Scarlet Introduction – Breakthroughs  We had some breakthroughs in 2021 and 22. Slowly but surely through managing and monitoring our little scarlet malachite beetle nursery cottages, we accumulated enough confidence to have another go at captive breeding, really just to find out what the larvae (beetle grubs) eat. Are they specialists on

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theladybird spider

The Lady Bird Spider

It’s all about the Ladybird Spider for us at the moment. Last month we conducted another ladybird spider translocation on the Dorset heaths. Today we launch our newest book, Lacey the Ladybird Spider along with our Ladybird spider T-Shirts. This Easter, our ladybird spiders will be on CBBC’s Deadly Predators starring Steve Backshall… he gave

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British Cephalopods

Cephalopods

Head-foot, ink-jet brainy suckers – The Cephalopods of the British Isles Many people don’t have a clue what a cephalopod is. Even if their Greek and Latin is good the translation to ‘head-foot’ isn’t writhing with firm answers. But almost all people know what octopus and squid are and most have at least heard of

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seahorse t-shirts

Seahorses

Seahorse Conservation In the early 1990s I helped found the Fish and Aquatic Invertebrate Advisory Group for what was then the Zoo Federation of Britain and Ireland (now BIAZA). I also designed the logo. Among our first project species were seahorses. Not only were they in dire need of conservation attention and awareness, they are

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Conservation species

Conservation

We really are conservationists  Every product we send out is accompanied by a card thanking the buyer for supporting ‘our conservation projects’. What does this mean? Can artists, fashion brands or stationary suppliers actually help threatened species, or is it ‘Greenwash’?  A lot of businesses offset their damage to Earth’s environment by supporting charities, planting

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Minke Whale Art Print

Whale Encounters Big and small

The whale is the most astonishing animal the world has ever known. It does not merely inspire superlatives – it is a living superlative.  Jacques Cousteau, 1986  Meeting a Minke Whale In late December 2015 a Minke Whale washed ashore at Ynyslas where the River Dyfi meets the sea. Information came filtering in through social

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