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).

 

Garden Species 18-20th April

Some garden species photographed over past 2 days - good to see a small Cuckoo wasp and the first Holly Blue. Otherwise a mix of species. First Red Damselfly in the garden today but wasn't carrying camera at the time (dates for previous years range from May 25th in 2010 to April 13th in 2020).