Lackford Lakes More Portraits

A second set of insect and spider portraits from our sunny visit to Lackford Lakes on Thursday (ID sheets to follow)

Toft's Bees and Other Wildlife Wake Up

 The warm conditions yesterday brought a lot of species out of their winter dormancy and onto the foliage. Favourites definitely the small Weevil, Box Bug, Bee Fly, and the unusual-looking parasitic fly, Gonia picea. I recently received the new Flies book by Stephen Falk and others so looked it up. The Dark broadface visits flowers including Daisy, is parasitic on moths including Square-spot Rustic which we definitely have in the garden and is one of the first Tachinid to appear in spring. Bees more difficult to ID!

Barnwell Country Park

 A very enjoyable trip to Barnwell Country Park with the RPS Nature group and Paxton Volunteer group. We were shown round by Matthew, an RPSNature member but also a volunteer at Barnwell. This Northamptonshire Country Park is small but had a good variety of subjects to photograph, both birds (later post) and meadow/trees/wetland habitats to explore more 'closely'. My highlight was photographing my first pseudoscorpion found in the leaf litter under a log. The second photo is on Mike's handkerchief - the detail in the weave shows just how small this is. Under or near the same log there were various beetles, wood lice and Enchytraeus (White worms includes about 40 species of annelid worms) and a Ground Hopper. (ID sheet at end)

Wet Insects at RSPB Sandy

We hoped for a fine sunny day to photograph solitary bees, dragonflies and butterflies in RSPB Sandy's grounds but had light rain most of the day. However, we found plenty of interesting subjects  covered with rain droplets, including this Common Wasp, Hairy Shieldbug and Green-eyed Flowerbee sleeping attached to a twig by its mandible.

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).