Wasp Spiders at Royston

A party of 12 from CCC visited Royston Heath yesterday in search of Wasp Spiders and Chalkhill Blues. Once the cloud cleared a bit, there were plenty of butterflies and to our delight abundant wasp spiders. I was particularly pleased to find one with a grasshopper in the web - its stated prey, though Chalkhill blues were the most abundant corpses in the webs

 

A Hot Morning in the Woods

The Woodland Belt at Wimpole is closed except one short path through Eversden Woods. I hope these infrared images give a feel of the almost impenetrable wildness of ivy and undergrowth that is developing in the undisturbed parts of the wood.

Wimpole Infrared

I took my Sony RX IR converted camera on a walk to Wimpole Folly today. The second image is the original jpeg from the Sony, profile produced in camera with whites set to neutral. All the colour changes to give blue skies  etc done in Lightroom.

Paxton July Survey Butterflies and Dragonflies

Saturday was our monthly survey at Paxton Pits of butterfly and dragonfly numbers. Here a few of those recorded - Small Copper, Green-veined White, Small skipper, Essex Skipper, Ruddy Darts, Migrant Hawker, Blue-tailed damselfly, Emerald Damselfly, Emperor Dragonfly and Scarce Chaser 

Derek Moss Sculptures at the Beren

I spent a couple of hours photographing Derek Moss's sculptures at his Open Studio display. He was exhibiting his work in the garden of John McGill our Toft Sculptor, whose work I have featured in my Blog previously (Link) . Very difficult conditions, particularly for photographing the bronzes.

Fun with the Kingfishers

This young kingfisher (white tip to beak) was one of a party of 4 kingfishers flying around and fishing at Paxton yesterday. It made several dives but wasn't successful! I used the fast drive to record consecutive flight shots as it dived and then aligned them to make a composite (image 2). The dive down shows how the speed increases as it dives down (greater spacing of consecutive images). Unfortunately the return to perch was not so successful composite as the bird flew forward of the focus zone (my camera is not good enough autofocus to track this). The last two are of the adult male (longer completely black beak, unspeckled breast etc) in the distance.