Paxton Insects

A few images from a walk round Redlands area of Paxton. Great number of Soldier Beetles at the moment, many mating plus Scorpion Flies and large numbers of Damselflies. All the Damsel photos I took turned out to be Common Blue Damselflies but there was quite a variation in markings from the adult male, teneral male, green form of female and blue form of female. Grizzled Skippers still on the wing, plus several dragonflies - here a female Scarce Chaser. Several Hoverflies (here Pipiza noctiluca) plus their larvae on the nettles

Marsh Harriers and Cuckoo at Lackford

Ellie chose to visit Lackford with me today on her day off, hoping to see a Kingfisher - no luck with that wish but we did have great views of Marsh Harriers, Heron, Egret, Lapwing in the Irises etc and, best of all, a really good view of a male Cuckoo, who conveniently then landed in a tree and proceeded to call just to confirm the ID. A lot of Common Blue Damselflies and a quite late Orange-tailed Mining bee

Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey Paxton

 Definitely lower numbers of Butterflies for our June Survey at Paxton but Dragonflies made up for it with large numbers of Common blue damselflies plus a few Azure and Variable and, mostly strikingly, very large numbers of Emerald damsels and in areas not previously recorded. Here a few images from the day, including male and female Emeralds and Banded Demoiselles, a species of  Potter Wasp, a Red-tipped Clearwing and  Wilke's mining Bee

Paxton Pits May Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

Although warm and sunny there were worryingly few butterflies around though the Dragonflies made up for them with good sightings of Norfolk Hawkers and a very good year for Banded Demoiselle numbers. A lot of time was spent early on refreshing our ID skills for Variable (narrow or exclamation mark top thorax stripe, spur mark with stem, short amount of blue on S9 and 'bat' mark on tail segment), Azure (wider top stripe on thorax, but less than Common, Spur mark no stem, large amount of blue on S9 and spur-type mark on tip of abdomen) and Common (very blue thorax, wine glass mark, lots of blue on abdomen etc). Other dragonflies photographs are Blue-tailed Damselfly and Four-spot and Scarce Chasers. The highlights of the very few Butterflies were a Small Copper and a Grizzled skipper - the latter in a new area so hopefully they are spreading. I couldn't resist two other subjects that caught my lens - a Sallow Kitten moth caterpillar and some Sawfly larvae.

Sandy Bees, Wasps and Friends

On Monday afternoon, we transferred to the Beewolf Wasp colony nearby. Unfortunately, the rain came as we arrived but was not heavy enough to stop photographing and we spent an hour or so with the Sand Wasp (Ammophila sabulosa), Pantaloon bees (Dasypoda hirtipes), Common Blue Damselfly, Red-legged Bug and Field Grasshopper. The weather then brightened and activity started on the mound with Beewolf Wasps and Pantaloon Bees busy digging out their burrows. We saw one wasp carrying its honey bee prey but by then it was late in the afternoon