Rutland Water Walk 1. Grebes and Egrets

Plenty to see and photograph on our RPS Nature Group outing to Rutland Water though most of it was fairly distant. Here images of Great Crested Grebes at various stages with some pairs on nests, others showing courtship behaviour or arguing over territory. Lots of Little Egrets and one Great White Egret entertained us. 

Paxton Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

Last year we found a single Grizzled Skipper on the equivalent survey, this year more than 10 so there is definitely a breeding colony. We also located one very early Green-Eyed (Norfolk) Hawker, a Scarce Chaser along with the Four-Spot Chasers, a Hairy Dragonfly, four species of 'Blue' Damselflies and also Banded Demoiselles.

Garden Safari - Life Among the Buttercups

The predominant flower in the meadow are the buttercups and the leaves and flowers attract lots of visitors - some like these 22-Spot Ladybirds are very small but with an impressively long latin name Psyllobora vigintiduopunctata, and lots are new recordings for the garden for me (not all great macro shots but good enough for ID).

Light and Shape at Grafton Centre Cambridge

There are plans to demolish or adapt the Grafton Centre so we thought that, as part of our recording Cambridge project, we should photograph it as soon as possible. We visited yesterday on a bright morning and I got distracted from the main purpose of a historical record by the play of light and shade interacting with the strong architectural shapes. It seemed to work best in monochrome especially as the wide-angle adapter I was using on my Fuji X100V is soft at the edges and shows quite a lot of chromatic lens aberration. 

Garden Safari - Powers of Camouflage

While hunting for insects in my small meadow area, I became aware of a very small spider on top of a dandelion head. It is about 3mm long, called Zilla diodia, and quickly camouflaged itself as a bract. An equally crafty Dock Bug took the appearance of Buddleia bark complete with hole while the Zebra spider's stripes broke up its outline as it ran around. Finishing with a range of other mini inhabitants of the garden.