Moths & Butterflies.org.uk       Moths, Butterflies, Insects, Water Fowl, other Birds, Mammals, Reptiles and Fungi in the UK, and abroad.

Hi, I'm Dave Hatton, and I had my own business as a self employed computer engineer. My business was building new desktop PC's from scratch I also sold computer accessories components, laptops as well as software and hardware repairs, mainly on desktop PC's, until I retired in 2018.

My lifelong interest for wildlife has got me into a few hotspots, and other precarious situations. For instance in Florida USA I was almost arrested for lying flat-out on my stomach, on a wide grass verge. The verge was alongside a wide, and deep drainage ditch, full of dragonflies. A police car pulled out of the adjacent Orlando hotel car park, the officer just sat in his car for a minute staring in disbelief. Suddenly the two coppers jumped out and rushed over toward me, guns drawn, they looked as if they really meant business. Of course as far as I was concerned, I was doing nothing wrong. I wish you could have seen their faces when I explained that I was just taking pictures. They still seemed just as puzzled when they left, perhaps people in Orlando don't photograph wildlife?

Another time I was again laying flat on my tummy, in long grass on the disused railway line in Stafford. An approaching couple couldn't see what I was doing because of the long grass, and they were convinced that they had found a corpse. I was photographing a caterpillar and keeping as still as possible, so as to get a clear, in focus shot. I could hear them whispering, and talking to a third person, they sounded alarmed. It never occurred to me that I was the cause of their concern, and they were ringing the police to report a body. Imagine their surprise when I suddenly stood up, the lady shrieked. They both saw the funny side later, and we all had a good laugh.

Some of my earlier pictures from Florida, and some other places are not great. Many years ago I was working on a very restricted budget, and couldn't afford top of the range camera's. Since then over the years my photography equipment has gradually improved. My last camera was a Fuji Finepix S9800 with 50x optical zoom, it was with this camera that I took a lot of my more recent bird, and moth images. My latest camera is a state of the art Nikon Coolpix P1000. This camera has 125x optical zoom, and 125x digital zoom, combining the two gives equivalent lens length of 12000mm. It also has an automatic setting, specifically for shooting birds using the telephoto lens. The most recent image it took was a Juvenile Great Cormorant, at a range of 400 yards plus, in very low light, with no tripod. Having a greater diameter lens lets more light in, and works better in low lighting conditions. I have great expectations for this camera.

Incidentally all the pictures on this website are my own, I don't display other peoples photographs, that way there is no liability for copyright.

There are many forms of wildlife on this website, including insects, arachnids, mammals, reptiles, birds, wild flowers and fungi. Over the last couple of decades my efforts have been focused mainly on insects, mostly butterflies and moths. However, as there are not many insects around in the winter months, I recently decided to stay active over the winter. I have taken a great interest in water fowl, and this has kept me active these last six months. The insect section of the website is by far the largest, consisting mainly of UK moths. There is also some butterflies, bees, wasps, beetles and dragon and damselflies. My section on birds is mainly water fowl, with a smattering of land birds, including gulls. There is also a few pages of some of the places that I visit, with photographs. There are links on the contacts page to other wildlife groups.

To get the best of my wild life images, and images on any nature website, I suggest using a laptop, or desktop computer. Small mobile screens such as phones, or tablets don't do justice to the images. Many details, and other nuances can be missed on smaller screens. This is why I have not made either of my websites mobile friendly. Screens, in my opinion, should be at least 14", it is possible to connect the majority of laptops to a larger screen, the larger the better!

When landing on my home page, I advise that you go to the green coloured 'Sitemap' link. The 'Sitemap' will guide you as to the type of creatures to be seen on this site. There are links on the sitemap which will take you straight to the sections you wish to view. As an alternative to the sitemap, from the homepage you could just click on the 'What's New' link. The 'What's New' page gives you  all the latest species and pictures added most recently to the site.

If you are looking for a specific species of creature, there are two options. Option one is on the homepage click the 'Species List' link, this will give you the first page of six lists of species found on the website. The second option is to use the 'Quick Species ID Guides', at the top of the 'What's New' page, and the 'Species List/s' pages. Failing this you can use the search, situated on the top right of every page on the website.

Anyway without further ado Welcome to Moths and Butterflies UK. I hope you will have many happy hours browsing this website, and enjoy looking at the images, as much as I did taking them. You may like my very similar sister website at www.hattonsgarden.org.uk

Please feel free to give me feedback on the website. If you spot any errors, or think of possible improvements, let me know at dave.hatton29@btinternet.com, or you can try me on davehatton@davehatton16 on Twitter. I would welcome your comments with a view to improving, or correcting the site content.

Last updated on: Wednesday the 3rd March 2023.