RPS Field Trip to Wet Wicken Fen

A party of eight braved the rain yesterday and explored Wicken Fen walking over to Burwell Fen. As usual, I had my eyes mainly downwards looking for insects etc. With the wet and cold conditions, these were restricted to Culex mosquitoes in large numbers, snails, crane flies and other resting flies. Towards lunch, the clouds lifted a bit and it was warmer so suddenly Mayflies and Stone Flies were crawling up every available reed and launching into the air or caught by Spiders. I only managed a few bird photos though others were successful with a pair of hunting Barn Owls, Cuckoos and Reed Warblers. Unfortunately it was a short respite and the afternoon proved even wetter for a circuit of the boardwalk. Most of photos taken at 6400 ISO so a tribute to modern technology and software.

Stonechat Versus Emperor Moth and Bee

This female Stonechat appeared to call to the disinterested male before flying out and returning with an Emperor moth. She consumed this whole with some difficulty and then flew again and returned to a better position to photograph her swallowing bee!

Studio Macro Session at Pitsford

A few images from a studio macro session on Wednesday. I particularly liked the first two, taken with the Fuji X100V (23mm lens plus close-up filter); rest with 80mm macro. The moths are Poplar Hawkmoth, Spectacled, Hebrew Character and Brindled Beauty 

Macro Day at Pitsford SSSI

I took part in a Macro session at Pitsford SSSI yesterday run by Naturetrek and led by Dave Jackson. A very enjoyable day though insects were a bit short on the ground (and in the air) with no damselflies and only a very few of butterflies. It was good to not be in 'recording mode' as for nature surveys but to take time with each photograph. Here are a selection of my favourite 'in the field' shots. We also did a studio session (in the open air of course) - images to follow

Two New species in One Day

 I was lucky enough to see and photograph two new species on Sunday - the White-faced Darter and the Raft spider. The latter is an impressive spider with a body length of 2 cm and very long legs - I had difficulty even with focus stacking getting all the body and legs in focus so went for a head-on shot. There are three different Raft spiders shown. It was a cool and windy day so the second dragonfly failed to expand the wings perfectly but it managed to fly.