Swiss Garden at Old Warden

We hadn't visited the Shuttleworth Collection and Swiss garden at Old Warden for several years and so decided on a visit there yesterday, remembering the cafe for an old-fashioned brunch and large areas of wild garden beyond the formal area in the Swiss Garden. Unfortunately the cafe has been modernised and, just our luck, the kitchen was closed. The gardens are still impressive for the tall trees etc but it has all been 'tidied ' up and certainly is no longer the haven it was for insects. These are all I found in a 90 minute visit - the Welsh Chafer (brown beetle) has not been reported on the NBN atlas anywhere in the area so was an interesting find. The strange looking bug is a nymphal stage of the Tree Damsel Fly. Certainly the very hot conditions did not favour an insect hunt except for the Four-Spot Chasers.

Paxton Survey Great Meadow Saturday 15th June

Unfortunately we only managed half the survey on Saturday before rain stopped play but there were some good finds including this amazing pupal case of a small Weevil beetle attached to a thin blade of grass. various Hemiptera, Flies and a single Four-spot Chaser hiding in the grass

Open Photography Day at Paxton

The  light winds and relatively warm conditions yesterday encouraged the damselflies and even an emerging 4-Spotted Chaser to show themselves for our 40 plus visitors to Paxton Pits Open Day yesterday.  Thanks to the CCC and RPS Nature groups members who came and assisted in the field, David Smith from OM-Systems for providing a tutorial on Macrophotography and Ann and Mike Thomas and other Friends of Paxton Pits Volunteers for running the practical side. From the emails received the day was obviously greatly appreciated. Here a few snaps from the day.

 

Paxton Green-eyed Hawkers and Flight Shots

I spent some considerable time trying to get good flight shots of insects and I have still not got an image where everything is right! The first damselfly would be fine if the nearer wing was positioned in the space behind the legs and the beetles are soft on the wing cases. While photographing the Four-spotted chasers, a coupled pair of Green-eyed Hawkers arrived and then a second male waiting to get in on the action if he can. Pyramidal orchid included as first one I have photographed at Paxton Pits.

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.