Exciting news! My latest book - Planting for Pollinators. Scheduled for publication 22 June. Published by Bloomsbury. #pollinators #gardening #planting #flowers

To celebrate part 1 of David Attenborough’s fascinating programme #attenboroughslifeincolour last night, Darwin’s slipper flower Left: visible light Right: #UVlight The least seedsnipe - a bird - pollinates it & eats the white sweetlip as a reward #COLOUR #Flowers

Anyone help please with ID of a mosquito Culiseta? A male nectaring on Fatsia japonica in our Surrey garden 19 NOV 2020. We have a pond in the garden @DipteristsForum

Thanks for your fun quote “fucus vesiculosis is otherwise known as heather angel” which I had not heard before, here is the only Fucus vesiculosus image I can quickly find. @dlyons339

Taken in south China, a mother gibbon and her newborn is one of my favourite wildlife images. Other wildlife featured in Bradt’s Jan issue of The Travel Club e-zine. Sign up for your copy: bit.ly/2yiSrzi

RT "While studying the life cycle of bladderwrack seaweed in LC biology many moons ago, our teacher informed the class that “fucus vesiculosis is otherwise known as heather angel” @dlyons339 Well, I never knew that! Thanks for the useful snippet I am getting material for a memoir

Throughout 2020 I have been buying & growing plants to photograph floral visitors for a new book. It was a snug fit for a carder bee seeking nectar in honeywort - with the eyes inside I could get really close

Winter foragers 2019: honeybee picks up pollen as nectaring on Daphne bholua Jacqueline Postill. Tree bumblebee on sweet box (Sarcococca confusa) nectar. Fly on wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox Luteus) nectar. Buff-tailed bbee collects winter honeysuckle pollen

Thrilled to see the first flowers opening on a classy winter flowering clematis (Clematis napaulensis) in our unheated conservatory today. Thanks @crocusCoUk for my fav clematis to date. Reminiscent of purple grapes smothered in cream

Thanks Gillian You too. I am awaiting for buds on a rare winter clematis to open by Christmas!

This stunning flower is Cypella aquatilis from Brazil, which flowered in our Surrey pond in 2018 & 2019. Classified in Iridaceae – the iris family – it appears on our Christmas e-card this year

It is from the smoke tree (Cotinus coggyria) Yves. I noticed the lovely pattern for the first time this year, but left it too late to get a shot!

Short on ideas for Xmas presents? Check out many of my pollination shots & some China images now available as prints natureplprints.com/heather-a… Thanks to @naturepl there is a 15% offer code (NPLXMAS) until Xmas

A sharp-tailed bee in our Surrey garden feeds on Sedum 10/9/019 Coelioxys ?conoidea @StevenFalk1 @Eucera When cloud covered sun it disappeared, but returned when sun came out – 3 times!

What fun! I wonder how often a bee has to retreat if it finds another bee got there first?!

Lovely! One of my favourite flowers! Here is one I grew last year at a slightly later stage when anthers shedding pollen and nectar drip visible. It is a bat pollinated flower.

A common carder bee gets smothered in large pollen grains of Hibiscus syriacus as it reaches for nectar between the narrow petal bases

Surely no photographer can be happy about their shrunken Twitter banner. I am losing my enthusiasm to post images. But here is one I took last weekend showing a bee wolf carrying a honeybee back to its brood chamber. Notice how the bee is carried upside down

One minute I counted 10 different kinds of insects foraging on this Achillea (cultivar of yarrow) – mainly flies & hoverflies. Moments later a wasp arrived, grabbed a hoverfly and bit of its wings before it began to consume the body; by which time I had grabbed a camera

Now is the time to check out wasps visiting and pollinating snowberry flowers. Their head (but not antennae) fits neatly into the tiny downward hanging flower. Their legs grip the outside of the flower and others in the cluster to support the hanging body.