Macro Session at Paxton Pits

A very enjoyable morning at Paxton on Friday wandering through the reserve taking images of what we saw, trying to choose good specimens and good angles of view. Damselflies very active now along with a good variety of spiders!! The first image is a member of the Mayfly family with the most extraordinary eyes - I think it is a Small spurwing but the ID app prefers Pond Olive though I have never seen one of that species with these protruberances, The black Hoverfly is yet to be confirmed on species as this too is new to me.

Stanwick Lakes April 10th

 Jane had to collect some photographic equipment from Northampton so we took the opportunity to visit Stanwick Lakes expecting lots of birds to photograph and therefore equipped with long lenses rather than macro gear. Birds very sparse but lots of Orange Tip Butterflies, a male Geen-veined White and also several species of Hoverfly. The Orange Tips were displaying and clearly ready for mating. Lots of  Beeflies so experimented with shutterspeeds to freeze the wings (1/2000 and then 1/8000th). Finally the only two birds close enough to photograph Dunnock and Great Crested Grebe.

Bees etc Trumpington Meadows

Although cooler than previous couple of days, yesterday's sunshine did encourage quite a few mining bees to be on the wing and feeding on the dandelions at Trumpington Meadows. A lot of photos I haven't been able to identify but the Lasioglossum laevigatum along with Andrena flavipes and Andrena haemorrhoa were confirmed. Lots of Bee Flies and Eristalis pertinax hoverflies around.

Unexpected Find in the Garden

Photographed this ladybird during my morning patrol of the garden presuming it was a rather small 7-spot but when I downloaded the photo, it is clearly a different species, which I had no idea existed! - the Adonis' Ladybird, Hippodamia variegata - much smaller than the 7-spot and with different thorax markings.  Also surprised to find that two of the leaf bugs were new species for the garden - genus Nysius with species names using their host plants (see ID sheet at end).

An Umbel Life

For the last three days, a large Hogweed flower in the garden has been providing food for a very large population of hoverflies, wasps and beetles, some very small like this Eumerus hoverfly treading on an even smaller Carpet beetle. (IDs on final image).