The last couple of weeks, I’ve been documenting the growth and development of the Garden tiger moth. Because I want to include the entire caterpillar stage and it’s impossible to accurately predict how long this will take, I have to take into account multiple scenarios. In this case, I planned a photo session every other day, just to be sure I had the photos I needed. If the caterpillar stage lasts for 6 weeks, as was the case with this species, I have a lot of photos and I only need 8 of them for the final series. I thought it was a shame not to use so many other ones, so I decided to turn them into an animation. Read more

A lot of series of my project are planned, but sometimes they can come as a surprise. The new series, I’m hoping to work on in the next couple of weeks, is a good example of this; I found some mysterious eggs in my garden. They seem to be gastropod eggs, but I’m not sure if they are from a snail or a slug. The exact species is even more of a mystery at this point. Read more

Creating series for Development is challenging in several ways; I’ve written blogs before about big or really small animals, but in my opinion, the biggest challenge has to be animals that go through a big transformation, like some insects (caterpillar to butterfly or larvae to beetle) or amphibians. With these series, timing is of the essence; you want to illustrate the whole process as clearly as possible, without missing any important stages. This also applies to the newest insect species of Development, the Fox moth – Macrothylacia rubi. Read more

One of the problems I had to deal with lately, is finding the right food plants for certain animals, especially insect species. I have some plants in my garden, but when the animals require a specific plant, which is not really common, the only option is to buy one at for example a garden center. Unfortunately, that isn’t always a solution, as I experienced this last week. Read more

For most people, taking care of baby animals is a great thing to do. Generally speaking, it is, but sometimes things can go horribly wrong. Not all newborn animals are completely healthy, and some of them don´t survive. This almost happened to the baby Gargoyle gecko I´m following for the Development project at the moment. Fortunately, I can say ´almost’, because in the end I was able to save it. Read more