Juliet Turner
@juliet-turner
Biologist, Wildlife Photographer, Science Communicator. previously DPhil @ Oxford: insect social evolution 🐝 Views my own 🤓
Incredible to view moss through the lens of a dragonfly wing. Moss evolved ~450 million years ago. Dragonflies have flown through Earth’s skies for 300+ million years. All eyed, air-living things throughout that period may have seen this same sight. Few other combinations have existed so long.
Female Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) laying her eggs in soft wood beside my garden pond.
“Save the Bees” is a conservation slogan that has really taken off, but what does it actually mean? My article here 👇 open.substack.com/pub/juliettu...
Another regular garden visitor: a male Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum)
I think that this mason bee peering out of one of my bee hotels might be the best photo I’ve ever taken. It’s just too cute!
Large-headed Resin bees (Heriades truncorum) nesting in one of my bee hotels.These were once considered very rare, but happily they’re not quite so rare anymore!
It was clearly a great idea for me to make my email address publicly available. How else would I get such incredible insights into the human psyche, and so conveniently delivered straight to my inbox?
More garden pond visitors: a pair of Willow Emerald Damselflies (Chalcolestes viridis). 🧚 This species is a recent colonist to the UK, only arriving in 2007. I’ve never seen it before!
Three days after I built this pond, and I’ve already had three species of dragonfly and damselfly visiting. All of them were either mating or ovipositing (or both). Today there was a pair of Common Darters.
Sometimes in life it is necessary to spend an hour (maybe even two) doing nothing but sitting and watching a baby newt eat worms on top of a waterlily leaf. 🪷
Is this otter poo? Very cool if so. Seen at Milham Ford Nature Park, Oxford @judywebb.bsky.social
Two very different aquatic habitats and the fish species I found there: 1) the River Cherwell / the Eurasian Minnow 2) a muddy puddle / the Three-spined Stickleback
A Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui) laying eggs on a thistle. 🦋 These butterflies migrate from Africa to the Arctic Circle, passing through the UK on their ~9,000-mile round trip. They repeat the same journey every year but it takes several generations to complete it.
I gave Ajax this ball and in exchange he gave me one of my gel earplugs that has been missing for a week that he *somehow* knew was hidden in that specific plant pot under that particular leaf.
Ajax found an ant’s nest 🐜 I don’t hand feed him at all anymore to encourage him to be independent and not associate humans with food. He now independently forages in the garden and surrounding area, but I do supplement this by scattering cat biscuits and mealworms outside.
I just found one of the UK’s rarest butterflies! This week I am surveying for a long-term farmland biodiversity monitoring project & this little butterfly caught my eye. It’s the Black Hairstreak (Satyrium pruni) which I have never seen before. Sadly, it’s classed as Endangered on the GB Red List.
My copy of @rowhoop.bsky.social book just arrived. Beautiful cover! Can’t wait to read it.
Not all moths have wings! In the UK, there are a handful of moth species with females that never grow wings, even when fully grown. The Vapourer Moth (Orgyia antiqua) is among them. These photos are from when I kept a colony as pets to observe their life stages.
