Sandy Heathland Insects

Each year I look forward visiting a site near Sandy and spending several hours recording the various insects that make their home in the sandy soils. Unfortunately (not the right word!!) this year the site has been more or less trashed with cans, litter, broken glass and the remains of BBQs everywhere over the area. So I visited RSPB Sandy heathland instead and relaxed for a couple of hours among the various insects that make their home there. There were limited numbers but a very good range as the following photos show from Beewolf wasps, Ornate-tailed digger Wasps and Epeolus cruciger Red-thighed Cellophane Cuckoo bee. There were also plenty of the Red-banded Sand wasps - this one relentlessly dragging a large caterpillar over long distances and large numbers of what I think is Hedychrum niemelai a cuckoo wasp that is relatively new to our shores.

 

Paxton Survey August 6th

Tuesday was showery and not very warm so there were not many insects on the wing but searching in the grass etc produced 70 plus species including several Grasshopper species and Speckled bush cricket.

 

Wasp Spiders Galore

It seems to be a good year for Wasp Spiders at Paxton. We found well over a dozen during a survey of quite small area of the Pits. Mostly they were in groups of two or three which I haven't seen before (or anyway noticed). Here are a few photographed with different techniques - either smallish aperture so good depth of field or focus-stacked with a narrow DOF.  The first image is an image stacked with Zerene stacker software while the second is an in-camera jpg stack. 

Wasp's Attempt at Theft Foiled

My eye was caught by this wasp trying to steal prey from a spider's web. It had just about sawn off the fly's head  to take away when the spider Enoplognatha spp) arrived arrived on the scene. The wasp tried to escape but it was caught by strands of the web until its struggles broke the connection and it flew away. Interesting it had its sting out in the final frame - wonder if the spider or wasp would have won if it had not got free.

 

More Tales from the Garden

We had both of  the large hoverfly Hornet mimics in the garden yesterday (Volucella inanis and zonaria ) - here V. zonaria caught in flight at 1/10,000 second a Green-veined White at 1/4000. The bee was probably too large and dangerous a prey for the flower spider! The Ruddy Darter is a new species for the pond and good to record two different Harvestmen under the same log pile. Finally a couple of very attractively marked green bugs (Hemiptera)

More Garden Species

Here is the latest batch from our garden, some of them very small and some new species for my list!.