Paxton Wildlife Survey (Gully area)

I have now sorted my photos from the second wildlife survey of 2025 at Paxton on Saturday (I missed the first one of the season as not recovered sufficiently from my op then).  A car lift to and from the Gully area allowed me to concentrate efforts on recording the various insect life etc in the presently flooded Gully and on the edge of Gully Wood from Redlands side (each site gets surveyed every two years). The cold and dull conditions very much affected the wildlife but I did get a fair number of different species - flies, especially midges predominated and are difficult to ID from photos. These are the record sheets plus one rather dapper fly as the 'hero image'

First Insects etc of the Year

 The warm sunshine yesterday brought out quite a lot of flies, spiders and bees in the garden. Recovering from surgery is frustrating as I can manage the camera and macro lens but no fill-in flash and chasing bees is definitely out! Anyway here five invertebrates to start 2025 garden records

Wider Angle Macro

 As my 60mm macro stopped focusing suddenly and seems to be permanently, I tried my 18-45 mm lens with the Raynox close-up filter. Here a few examples of what is still active in my Cambridge garden. Most taken at the 45mm end but the Cricket and Flower spider were at the 18mm end.

Insect Portraits

The warm sun yesterday afternoon brought out quite a few insects in the garden posing on leaves ready for a portrait. The Snail-killing fly Coremacera marginata only sips nectar or dew but the larvae prey on land snails. The first image is a focus stack (15 images Zerene stacker) the second image is a single shot, The Soldier Fly and Hawthorn Shieldbug are focus stacks, the rest are single-shot portraits. The last image is a new one for my list I think, Vulgichneumon saturatoris, with the white spot on the tip of the abdomen 

30th August Toft Garden

Here are some of the species I was able to identify while starting to cut my  'meadow' area  - the root areas are particularly full of insects and spiders. There are many many more still to record  though not sure how many will be large enough to photograph and ID. some extras at the end from the Tansy etc

Toft Mini Invertebrates

It is time to cut the mini meadow in my garden but I couldn't do this without a session with the sweep net to see what is living in the grass. This is about a third of the species I managed to identify - many more are just too small.