April Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

 Today was our first Butterfly and Dragonfly survey of 2025 at Paxton but the cool weather meant sightings of the former were limited to a very few species and individuals though we did record a few Grizzled Skippers, along with Brown Argus, Orange tips etc. Only a handful of Damselflies mostly just emerged. There were a number of very curious (even ugly) bugs around including a Beetle - Platyrhinus resinosus Scarce Fungus Weevil which lives on the black knobbly fungus - Alfred cakes and a larva of a micromoth Coleophora pennella Bugloss case-bearer.

Lackford Lakes Part 1

The weather stayed fairly chilly and overcast all day at Lackford Lakes despite the promise of sunshine so a bit challenging for birds in the woodland areas but this Wren put on a great display, singing its heart out trying to compete with an equally vocal Blackcap. The Marsh Harriers, Heron, Egrets and Shelducks put on good displays so the morning passed very quickly!!

Toft Garden Bugs

 When the sun finally broke through this afternoon, the garden became alive with Hemiptera (Bugs),many of them paired up.

Waresley Wood Bluebells and Other Spring Flowers

Although there are a lot fewer areas of dense Bluebells to previous years, mainly due to the very vigorous Dog's Mercury growth in open areas, there are some dense areas. Today's early cloudy and periodically wet weather was ideal to record the delicate  blue colour. Later we had some sunny intervals which picked out the heads of the Early Purple Orchids (around 50 counted)  and single Bluebells well. I couldn't resist photographing a very impressive Cowslip plant and the Giant Horsetails in the meadow.

 

Paxton Wildlife Survey (Gully area)

I have now sorted my photos from the second wildlife survey of 2025 at Paxton on Saturday (I missed the first one of the season as not recovered sufficiently from my op then).  A car lift to and from the Gully area allowed me to concentrate efforts on recording the various insect life etc in the presently flooded Gully and on the edge of Gully Wood from Redlands side (each site gets surveyed every two years). The cold and dull conditions very much affected the wildlife but I did get a fair number of different species - flies, especially midges predominated and are difficult to ID from photos. These are the record sheets plus one rather dapper fly as the 'hero image'

Soft Focus Spring Flowers

Generally photographers spend a lot of time trying to get maximum depth of field and very sharp focus so it was fun photographing Bluebells etc with an old lens (Olympus 50mm manual f1.8 lens from my original film camera system) attached to a modern digital body working wide open and shooting into the light or with foliage very close to the lens (work in progress).