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.

Paxton Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

Last year we found a single Grizzled Skipper on the equivalent survey, this year more than 10 so there is definitely a breeding colony. We also located one very early Green-Eyed (Norfolk) Hawker, a Scarce Chaser along with the Four-Spot Chasers, a Hairy Dragonfly, four species of 'Blue' Damselflies and also Banded Demoiselles.