Super-snapper is calendar’s Mr July

Garstang Camera Club member Andy has been snapping pictures around Lancashire for many years.

He submitted one of his pictures, a telephoto-lens shot of a hare eating an ear of barley in a Winmarleigh field, to the calendar contest organised by the BBC programme.

His photo is one of the 12 chosen to appear in the calendar from among thousands of pictures submitted by amateur photographers around Britain.

Andy’s hare photo features for July 2016.

Andy, a gas service engineer, said: “I am thrilled. Apart from winning club competitions this is the first major honour I have had.”

The honour has prompted congratulations from his Garstang Camera Club colleagues, who have nicknamed him “Calendar Boy” and “Mr July.”

Andy, who lives at Mayflower Grove, Claughton-on-Brock with wife Mary, daughter Catherine and son Ben, has another claim to fame, as a regular winner of the adult fancy dress section of Garstang Children’s Festival.

Copies of all the photo entries which feature in the calendar can be viewed on the BBC Countryfile website.

The overall winner, voted for by Countryfile viewers for the cover of the calendar, is of a happy hedgehog taken by Ben Andrew of Bedfordshire.

The calendar is now on sale, priced £9.50 with part of the sale price being donated to the BBC’s Children in Need Appeal.

It is available from WH Smith stores or from BBC Countryfile Calendar, PO Box 25, Melton Mowbray, LE13 1ZG.