Paxton Pits May Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

Although warm and sunny there were worryingly few butterflies around though the Dragonflies made up for them with good sightings of Norfolk Hawkers and a very good year for Banded Demoiselle numbers. A lot of time was spent early on refreshing our ID skills for Variable (narrow or exclamation mark top thorax stripe, spur mark with stem, short amount of blue on S9 and 'bat' mark on tail segment), Azure (wider top stripe on thorax, but less than Common, Spur mark no stem, large amount of blue on S9 and spur-type mark on tip of abdomen) and Common (very blue thorax, wine glass mark, lots of blue on abdomen etc). Other dragonflies photographs are Blue-tailed Damselfly and Four-spot and Scarce Chasers. The highlights of the very few Butterflies were a Small Copper and a Grizzled skipper - the latter in a new area so hopefully they are spreading. I couldn't resist two other subjects that caught my lens - a Sallow Kitten moth caterpillar and some Sawfly larvae.

My Wildlife Garden in May

I photograph and post a lot of insect images - here are the habitats in my garden that support the amazing variety of species recorded this year. The most spectacular area at the moment is the 'Hedgerow garden', backed by a very tall hedge, which is a mass of Red Campion and Oxeye Daisies at the moment. The most productive for species is the 'Meadow' - an area left as long grass and supporting many meadow flowers - Cranesbill, Daisies, Vetches, Scabious and Yellow Rattle (not done quite so well this year). Obviously the pond is an essential habitat while much of the rest of the garden are kept as fairly controlled borders that are a mix of perenial plants - originally purchased but now many self seeded or grown from collected seeds, and wild flowers (small yellow foxgloves, campion, buttercups, linaria, scabious etc)

 

Paxton 'Dragons', 'Damsels' and 'Scorpions'

 Although overcast and fairly chilly Paxton Pits was alive with Damselflies (Common, Variable and Blue-tailed plus Banded Demoiselles) and Scorpion Flies plus the occasional Dragonfly (Four-spotted Chaser). I decided to use just the 300 mm lens (with 1.4 converter) as I need to practise finding things in the view finder etc.

Garden Spiders etc

 Lots of Spiders in the garden yesterday including Xysticus cristatus, Jumping spider Salticus scenicus, Cucumber spider, Labyrinth Spider and nursery Spider. Also photographed Dark Bush Cricket, Wasp Beetle and Spectacle Moth

Cadwell Park Historic Racing Car Event

On Sunday, I visited Cadwell Park with Phil for the Historic Racing Cars event. Brought back many memories of going to Brands hatch in the 1950s opnwards as a child. The weather was perfect for walking round the wooded and very attractive site though a bit bright and contrasty for photographing shiny cars! or for really slow panning. I varied the panning rate and found that the very small and very fast SuperKarts gave a real challenge (1/400th). For the comparatively slow Formula Ford cars it was around 1/320th and for the Sports Cars etc right down to 1/125th. Obviously head-on shots required 1/2000th and above