Welney Provides a New Damselfly - Willow Emerald

The Willow Emerald Damselfly has been gradually moving north so delighted to find iton Friday at Welney  sheltering on the leeward side of one of the banks along with Migrant Hawkers and Ruddy Darters. Single individuals of the Willow Emerald Damselfly were recorded in 1979, 1992 and 2007. In 2009 there was a sudden boom of 400 records of the species  in SE Suffolk and NE Essex. Since this time, the Willow Emerald has spread rapidly across the south-east of England, gaining footholds in new counties on a yearly basis. I also spent a long while photographing the species in a rotten tree stump including a Jumping Spider and German Wasp.

Welney WWT Birds in High Winds

As it is only 20 mins from March where I had been staying overnight after talking there in the evening, I decided to visit Welney WWT Centre partly to see if I could spot the Pallid Harrier that is residing there at the moment. No luck on that one but good views of Cranes - parties of 3 and 4 seen. A very ginger Marsh Harrier kept us on our toes but definitely no white rump.

Cambridge Watercolours Compared with Today

The Museum of Cambridge has set our camera club the task of photographing some sites in Cambridge that were painted in the 19th/20th Century as they are today. Not an easy task and it certainly shows how much artistic license was used in creating the watercolours - for instance St Johns Chapel appears to have been repositioned in the first painting.

 

Cambridge, Workshop in King's Chapel and Streets

Yesterday, we ran a workshop in Cambridge to get to Know Your Camera with various exercises and projects. A lot of time was spent in my group getting to grips with the use of aperture  and shutterspeed priority modes to get the image you want rather then the automatic mode. The projects reinforced this with Differential focus as one topic, Intentional Camera Movement as another. I also spent time taking groups into King's Chapel  - an excellent location to practise low light photography, images for stitched panoramas and photographing stained glass. 

York Station and Railway Museum

Still sorting images from our long weekend in York. Particularly pleased with the wide-angle shots of the station in that for once people were more or less where I would have chosen to place them. The Railway Museum has so much to look at so only a flavour of the place with its multitude of carriages and engines. Again my favourites were the wide-angle shots this time looking up in the pit built under one of the engines.