Life and Death on Heronry Lake

This Little Egret was clearly hunting something among the vegetation and the camera reveals they were Red-eyed Damselflies which I hadn't recorded before on Heronry South. The Heron has caught a good-sized fish though can't ID it from the photo! Several Great White Egrets present plus a very large number of Gadwall - wonderful ducks in flight. I suspect these Migrant Hawkers will end up on somebody's menu but getting on with displaying, mating etc at the moment

Dragonfly (and Butterfly) Walk at Paxton

August's official Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey has been moved to Tuesday when it looks warmer and sunnier but five of us did the walk as planned yesterday and saw a large number of  white butterflies (mainly Small White we thought) and occasional Meadow Browns and one Small Copper but nothing settled for long. The Dragonflies were more obliging with several Brown Hawkers in the air and several Migrant Hawkers both flying and perched in the hedges. (Flight shot taken in afternoon from hide). All the darters we looked at turned out to be Common Darters. Otherwise a good variety of impressive flies and Grass-mimicing Bugs and Moths. ID sheet at end.

August Riverfly Session

 The Bourn brook is very low with the dry conditions generally this year so we were not surprised to find the fauna quite restricted for our August survey of the species present compared with July (see Riverfly )

The Next Generation in the Garden

The garden has lots of caterpillars and nymphal plant bugs and minute spiders as the next generations begin. Calophasia lunula, the Toadflax Brocade moth, is a recent immigrant to the UK but is now very widely spread - we have a good population every year, a very attractively patterned caterpillar. Plant bug nymphal stages are difficult to tell apart but generally they are found on the same plants as the adults which helps!! The garden has dozens of small flower spiders with different colours and pattern.

Challis Gardens

Francoise and David kindly dressed up in their Edwardian clothes and joined a group from our camera club at Challis Gardens in Sawston  for an evening shoot. We were lucky with the weather so there was beautiful golden sunlight just breaking through the trees. I decided to use a legacy f1.8 50mm lens which is ideal for an evening shoot except that it is manual focus only which I didn't always get spot on. I also used a full spectrum camera as the light faded  - have included one colour balanced and one b/w from that camera (interesting which clothing absorb, radiate or reflect infrared etc. Thanks David and Francoise for an enjoyable evening.