Garden Creatures

Praying Mantis or Mantid – Quite a common insect. Two forms are around – the green one like this female and the beige coloured form. We have lots of young ones in the shrubbery right now.

Praying Mantis or Mantid – Quite a common insect. Two form are around the green one like this female and the beige coloured from. We have lots of young ones in the shrubbery right now

Andalusian Wall Lizard – I took this shot on the coast

Not exactly in our garden but Common Dolphins are very close to us out on The Strait of Gibraltar. Last week wee took a family short boat trip out to watch some of the dolphins in the Bay of Gibraltar. It’s always lovely to watch these lovely mammals having fun following the boat

Egyptian Grasshopper detail. A common garden insect and fairly large into the bargain

Egyptian Grasshoppers can be quite variable in colour and seems to be able to blend in with it’s surroundings

Empusa fasciata is a type of mantid or mantis and is very small. This is one on an Apricot tree

Fly – detail. Most compound eyes of colourful insects are quite fascinating and using a hand-held macro lens on my Canon, I can get fairly good results

Passion Fruit flower – one of the summer blooms that’s not only pretty but attracts a lot of flying insects to our garden

Montpellier’s Snake – fortunately outside our garden! I took this photo a few weeks ago on the coast

Marsh Frog are frequent visitors in the swimming pool and mostly move around in winter

Ocellated Lizard – We have seen this huge reptile a few times in our garden, usually skulking around the compost

Mammoth Wasp on Wild Onion flower. Wasp is an intimidating – It looks quite an intimidating insect, but despite its black and yellow ‘warning’ colours, it is not at all dangerous to people. They are large impressive insects and females may grow to reach 4.5cmlong with males being a little smaller

Scarce Swallowtail newly emerged in our garden

Mediterranean Chameleon in our Loquat tree

Iberian or Sharp-ribbed Newt is an infrequent garden visitor here near the Barbate marismas. It uses a very odd type of defence when attacked whereby it forces its rib bones through it’s skin that come through like barbs… You can read more about this rare and threatened creature here

The newt or salamander as it’s sometimes called, has a rather flat head and the most amazing eye pattern and colours

Visit my website to learn more about my activities as a guide in the Andalucia region of Spain.

Stephen Daly

Stephen Daly, has been birding since he was eight years old in his native Scotland. After living in Germany and France he established Andalucian Guides the successful birding and wildlife tour company on The Strait of Gibraltar in Spain and has been living here since 2001. Photographing birds in flight is one passion and his photos can be found in many books, magazines and journals. Studying bird behaviour and bird migration are two other positive aspects of being based on one of the busiest migration routes on Earth.