Trumpington Meadows 9th May

 The warm weather on Saturday brought out lots of insects and spiders. I was trying to concentrate on compositions rather than just unusual species looking for interesting backgrounds and different focus/exposure settings. ID sheet at the end

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.

Entering Another World

I spend a lot of time trying to get sharp accurate images of insects etc for recording purposes so I decided for our CCC outing to Trumpington Meadows to try a softer approach with shallow depth of field and purposely using out-of-focus vegetation to further limit the amount of sharp details. I was lucky with the dull lighting which suited the technique. Taken on a Fuji X100V compact with Raynox close up filter at F2 to F5.6. The original idea was to photograph the buttercups but ran out of time other than the multiexposure and a couple of close ups

Third Water Survey at Paxton Pits

Yesterday, we did the last of this year's three water fauna surveys at Paxton Pits - here are a few of the creatures we found. The IDs are tentative in some cases where the diagnostic features are difficult to see in a photo. Others, like the leeaches are easier where the species are separated by the numbers and positioning of the eyes.