Paxton Pits - Rain At Last

In other years, the camera would have stayed in the camera bag with light levels as bad as they were yesterday morning, but the first rain into Heronry Lake at Paxton for many weeks had to be recorded!! The two Great Crested Grebe chicks are now as big as their parents but still being fed by them. They spend a lot of time in the shallow water - a good tactic to avoid the Cormorants. All the usual 'players' visited - Gulls, Gadwall, Coot, Heron, Egrets etc. 

Swallows Fledging

Yesterday morning our telephone wire to the house was suddenly occupied by a dozen or so Swallows, many of them young fledglings calling to be fed. I found the second image in my archives; it  was taken on August 5th 2008 and I thought about all the generations that would have visited Toft since Swallows used to nest in our garage (now our bedroom!!). They nested in the garage every year from when we moved 'up the road' in 2000 till the garage was converted in 2013. Since then, there have always been Swallows in the small holding up Mill Lane. After about an hour, they all flew off going south so I guess are starting the long migration.

Hidden in the Seedheads etc

A few photos of the very small garden inhabitants including many different types of gall and parasitic wasps etc that can't be identified fully from photos plus spiders etc. ID list at the end.

 

Drought Conditions at Summer Leys

The usually still lush meadow at Summer Leys is almost entirely without flowers now - just the Fleabane and a few remaining thistle flowers supporting a much reduced number of insect species. Below some of my favourite finds during the day, As at Paxton Migrant Hawkers reign supreme over the lakes and ponds while Small Heath, Small Copper, Brown Argus and Small White are the main butterfly species. It was an RPSNature outing so I was concentrating on backgrounds, composition rather than ID and species list but a few comedy shots also snuck in like the first Carder Bee out for a stroll and the shy grasshopper.

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