Spring Sounds and Sights at Paxton Pits

Garden Warblers were definitely the stars of a Dawn Birdwatch at Paxton yesterday, far outnumbering Blackcaps, Whitethroats and Chiffchaffs/Willow Warblers. On Saturday, we did the monthly survey of Dragonflies and Butterflies on a very warm sunny day so mass emergence of Damselflies (Variable, shown here and Common Blues) and plenty of butterflies including a Grizzled Skipper

A Good Year for Bluebells

The Bluebells in the Cambridgeshire/Bedfordshire woods are very impressive this year. Here a few from recent visits - mostly taken with the Olympus legacy 50mm 1.8mm lens so manual focus only. I varied the aperture in some shots and really like the softness of focus and colour that this lens produces.. The last image is with a modern Fuji 80mm macro - the glass results in much more contrast and saturated colours.

Early Purple Orchids

A wonderful display of Early Purple Orchids in our local woods at the moment. A very difficult species to do justice to with its supersaturated colour and always ' messy' surroundings, especially as I prefer to have the flowers with enough detail in the background to show habitat. A very variable species in its colour and petal shape etc.

Shapes and Patterns at the Botanic Gardens

I was photographing the shapes of single leaves and the patterns of their rosettes of leaves and their symmetry when I came to this ?Aloe. The new leaves develop in a spiral pattern but with a 5 point shape in the centre.

Botanic Gardens Shallow Depth of Field

The Jade vine is in full flower at the moment and has such large hanging groups of flowers that the corridor is closed to prevent damage to the plant. I was using an Olympus legacy lens from my film days - most are taken at F1.8, all manually focused. My favourite is the Pitcher plant - here the lens was still missed up giving a real rain forest feel to the image.