Survey Foxtail Meadow Paxton

 As Foxtail Meadow at Paxton Pits  regularly floods in the winter and there are plans to try and drain it, it would be good to have a complete as possible list of what grows and lives there at the moment. Obviously with the very dry weather, yesterday's results are not going to be 'typical' but they will add to information from previous and subsequent surveys. Here photos of some of the inhabitants and an ID sheet containing records of the invertebrates and flowers. My favourite is definitely the Nursery Web Spider in very Greek Athlete pose

Trumpington Meadows Butterfly Transect

Other than a few green stinging nettles nestled in the hedgerows, everywhere is dry and brown as in other reserves, so we were not expecting and did not find large numbers of Butterflies on our weekly transect. Small Coppers, Small Heaths, Small Whites, Brown Argus and Common Blues were the only species present in any numbers. I photographed a single Green-veined White and a Hummingbird hawkmoth egg laying plus a couple of Wasp Spiders.

 

Paxton Egrets and Great Crested Grebes 14th August

The young Egrets were testing out their flying skills and social interactions while the male of one of the Great Crested Grebe families was challenged over territory and quite a fight took place before the family retreated to their previous area.

Paxton Dragonfly Walks

We were lucky with the weather (warm but not too hot) for our walks at Paxton today with a good turnout of people keen to explore Paxton's Dragonflies. We split into two groups with our group exploring the Heron Trail in the morning and then Cobham Hide and part of the Meadow Trail in the afternoon. Trying to separate the Common and Ruddy Darters occupied a lot of time - seems to be the pale stripe on the legs in the Common Darters plus the 'Waists'  in the shape of the Ruddy Darter. Usual title sheet to check IDs