Plenty of signs of autumn migration at Paxton where possibly 4 Hobbies were busy catching late dragonflies over the lakes stocking up for their long journey south while the number of winter visiting ducks is building up with lots of Wigeon now whistling in lots of areas together with Gadwall r-resident and visiting. Marsh Harrier and Red kite patrolled the air and one of our resident Kingfishers visited a close post.
Some species from yesterday's garden session - never seen a colour morph of the Hairy Shieldbug before but pretty sure this is what it is. Still lots of species and fair numbers of many plant bugs and also Spiders. The caterpillar seems to be the Garden Tiger rather than Jersey T and the other hoary creature is a Larder Beetle larva. ID sheet at end.
I was carrying the small lightweight Olympus 60mm macro yesterday as well as a telephoto for any birds that might appear. Here are some of the insects and spiders lurking in the undergrowth. It had been very windy so the spiders had not formed webs but we managed to find the three species of Araneus. IDs will be on tomorrows blog with rest of insects using long lens.
Cambridge was very crowded on Saturday especially along the Backs and King's Parade - some of our photographic tasks involved tourists and well know buildings of Cambridge but, for the last topic, we had to seek out less-popular areas. Here a few images from this topic: "the Cambridge tourists tend not to see", starting with a Heron in Darwin College Garden and ending with a self-portrait in a metal hoarding!!
