Camouflage in the Garden

The dry conditions have reduced my garden wildlife but there are still insects to be found often well camouflaged on the flowerheads - the Hairy Shieldbug Nymph is amazing in its mimicry of the Knapweed calyx. 

Egrets and Grebes

 A very brief entry just to share Tuesday's party of three Egrets at Paxton busy catching and consuming the Damselflies etc on Heronry South and the good news that the young Great Crested Grebes are still avoiding Cormorant attacks (apologies - very poor light)

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.