Grantchester River Walk

The  Cam at Grantchester was alive with Banded Demoiselles and Brown Hawkers this morning. After nearly three hours frustration, I ended up with some images that I like. The Banded males seem to take aggression a bit far and attack females as well as males. The females in contrast seem happy to lay together.

Burwash Sightings

 Visited Burwash Manor Farm on Wednesday afternoon. Very hot and all the same species in flight and egg laying including the Black-Tailed Skimmer seen coupled here. There was also a single Brown Hawker and lots of Green-Veined Whites congregating on the muddy patches.

Another Evening with the Marbled Whites

 The images in the previous post were taken with the Sony RX100 so decided to visit the wood with the Canon 5D III and macro lens. Rewarded by lots of roosting butterflies including Small Heath, small skipper and 30 plus Marbled Whites.  Some of these were taken with 3200 or 4000 iso showing the big advantage of this camera. Amazing cloud formations and even included a half moon without realizing.

Marbled White are Back

 Very pleased to see the Marbled Whites are back  in our local meadow area and in larger number than previously. They were all settling down to roost when I walked round. Meadow Browns and Small skippers were also present in large numbers and a few Small Heaths.

Warwick University PAGB Finals

We attended the PAGB  PDI championships in Warwick University yesterday on what was officially  the hottest day of the year (31.5) and it felt it. The air conditioning was definitely not up to the job of cooling a theatre crammed with people. Cambridge CC did not do as well as recent years(somewhere mid-table) but that is not surprising as it is difficult in a general interest club to get enough range of excellent images to compete every year with the more competitive clubs.  So any CCC members out there, we very much  need some new images. Good pictorial natural history, sport, simple design and limited colour evocative landscapes and any images that include interesting backgrounds and people, whether composites or travel/street did well yesterday.

Dragonfly Pools at Their Best

Yet another hot still afternoon so off to the Dragonfly pools at Burwash. Plenty of Emperors, Black-tailed Skimmers and Four-Spot Chasers on the move and a single Banded Demoiselle (not photographed). The female Emperor had a hard time egg-laying as she was constantly bombarded by Black Tail Skimmers - no wonder their wings have so many chunks missing. I was shooting at 1/1600 or 1/2000 (1000 iso). The Buzzards were also active plus a nosey Sparrowhawk.

Meredith's New Dress

I don't often post portraits on my blog as I don't have much expertise (other than weddings!) but Meredith looked so great in her new dress, I have made an exception.

Evening Poppies in Barton

 After giving up on getting any more dragonflies in the frame, I tried a few evening shots of the poppy field - this time using F22 to get maximum depth of field. I ended up with a few fish-eye images to show the extent of the poppies as they stretched into the distance

Evening Visit to Burwash

It has been very hot here again in East Anglia so an evening stroll to the Dragonfly Pools and poppy fields was very pleasant. The Common blue damselflies, Black Tailed skimmer feamles and Emperor Males were all very active still catching insects etc. I liked the reflections in the water in several images