Paxton Pits Butterfly and Dragonfly Surveys

 A real mixed bag of images that reflect Paxton Pits showing some of its best to our large team of observers for our monthly Butterfly and Dragonfly survey yesterday. The route was the Meadow Trail. Butterflies were in very short supply and only two species were recorded on the survey route. The first image of the courting Speckled Woods is a fluke shot where the wing ete has exactly coincided with the position underneath of the true eye. Willow emeralds, Common Darters, Ruddy Darters, Migrant Hawkers, Red-eyed Damselflies and Common Blue Damselflies (no photo) kept us busy with ID sheets. The Wasp Spider, Sand Wasps and Great Crested Grebe chicks were from an afternoon walk round the Heron Trail

CRT Larkrise Farm Barton

 With the general dearth of insects in our drought conditions, I wasn't expecting large numbers of insects on my seasonal survey round Lark Rise Farm but there were even fewer insects etc than I predicted. Below are my only records for the 2-3 hour visit plus Brown Argus (2), Common Blue (?2), Meadow Brown (2) and Small White Butterflies (3)!!

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