Garden Waterlife

I have various containers of water in the garden - usually temporary for washing off any weed I am cleaning out from the pond so I don't destroy any water creatures sheltering in the excess weed. I thought I would see what had washed off from a previous pond session and delighted to discover this larval Cloeon dipterum larva (the Pond Olive) which correlates well with the adult photographed near the pond last year. 

Nature at Your Fingertips

Yesterday was the September Wildlife Survey at Paxton Pits and was in a large meadow complex adjacent to the River Ouse with damp ditches so it was not surprising to find quite a few wet species such as this Pond Olive that I rescued from a spider's web (it has lost one tail streamer). Lots of Spiders around this time of year including Xysticus matching its surrounding as does the Pardosa species running across pond weed. Otherwise the species that I was very pleased to record two years ago, Ormyrus nitidulus, a metallic green wasp, were very abundant below the oak trees (they lay eggs in the gall-causing caterpillars!).