Bourn Walk

 As I needed to go to the Surgery in Bourn this morning and it wasn't raining, I walked over via the edge of the golf course where there is a well-established Hawthorn hedge which yielded quite a few clumps of Fungi, a couple of Slime moulds and several vibrant lichen species. There was a lot of water in the Bourn Brook but fortunately no flooding on the walk. 

Trumpington Meadows Walk

A very enjoyable walk around Trumpington Meadows with Ian Webb,  the Community Conservation Officer at The Wildlife Trust who manage the Reserve. A few fungi (Psathyrella spp, Hare'sFoot Inkcap)  lichen (Physcia aipolia) were noted plus lots of emerging meadow plant species.

 One of the projects on the Reserve is  the construction of Butterfly Banks (also trialled at other UK reserves    Journal of Insect Conservation | Springer Nature Link). These are E-shaped mounds that offer butterflies etc the choice of shade and sun and also different set ups are orientated to give north, south, east and west choices. One project showed that the extreme high temperatures experienced in the UK in July 2022 resulted in a community of butterflies becoming inactive in the open areas, unable to fly, feed or mate during this period, but that the shaded areas provided places where  they could continue their activities. Work on other invertebrate species using pit traps showed remarkable differences between the hot sunny banks and the shaded areas. This suggests that producing artificial slopes and integrating patches of scrub within grassland could create an array of microclimates that allow butterflies and other invertebrates to thermoregulate, providing a refuge during extreme weather events so helping counter some of the negative impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather events. In particular, this might help stem the decline of our northern species of butterflies and other inverts as global warming progresses.

Welney Wildfowl Trust

The water levels on the Ouse Washes are too high for anywhere other than the main hide to be accessible. This added to the very poor light levels yesterday didn't give a lot of opportunity for photography but I did enjoy these starlings - obviously discussing the state of their world! Very few swans evident at Welney so I went for a drive around Pymore and discovered fields full of very muddy Whoopers!

(Some images are from my rather underpowered not-very-modern camera phone!!

 

Toft Wood Lichens

 There are some projects that I regret deciding to pursue and I think Lichen ID might be added to the list!! The differences between species or even genera in some cases is very small visually and so a complete classification of a localities lichens would have to involve a chemical testing! At the moment, I am resisting this and just doing tentative IDs having photographed them for their sheer beauty in colours and shapes!! These are from our 30-year old community wood in Toft. The first 3 images are from raw files sharpened and denoised with RawPrime3 and stacked in Zerene stacker while the others are jpegs from the Olympus camera's in-camera stacking. Again to shoot them all in raw, sharpen and denoise and then stack would be very time consuming. Lots of decisions!!

Snowdrops and Other Spring Flowers in Toft

These images were taken with a small Sony camera that was given to me as it wasn't working well. I gave it a good clean and then tested it at Toft churchyard which is turning white with snowdrops at the moment. Only saves in jpeg but will be a useful camera to carry with me as it has an impressive 20 times Zoom and can also do a reasonable macro shot.

Cambridge Botanic Gardens 2

 A few more images from our visit to the Gardens on Saturday including my first Bees of the year busy collecting from Winter Honeysuckle which is in full bloom. In the wooded areas some very impressive thorns and the plasmodium of a slime mould showing how wet it had been prior to our visit.