I’m a bit of a pond dipper, as some regular readers will have worked out, but there is one species that has always eluded me, the water stick insect. This year I saw a preserved specimen and a captive one (which I never managed to photograph), but never before had I seen a live wild…
After visiting Elmley Marshes last Saturday, we popped over to East Blean Woods, a Kent Wildlife Trust Reserve which is one of the best best sites for the rare heath fritillary butterfly. It took a while to find one as the sun had disappeared behind some thick cloud. But we looked around a promising spot…
A few years ago on my old blog I posted a diagram to show the emergence and flight times of all the British odonata (dragonflies and damselflies) and a seemed to be quite popular. Since then a number of new species have become established in Britain, or are at least well on their way to…
Here’s a slightly different pond creature shot, with a white background. The backswimmer is also a bit different as its Notonecta maculata, rather than the usual N. glauca.
Ive posted photos the larva of a lesser water beetle and the great silver water beetle recently, but the most ferocious of them all are the larvae of the great diving beetle species or Dytiscus larvae. If you mange to get one of these in your pond dipping tray, you will soon end up with…
Today at Wat Tyler there were dragonflies abound at the one pond I managed to visit in my lunch break. The first I noticed was this male broad bodied chaser On the water surface a number of azure damselflies in tandem were egg laying in the weed that was at the surface. Soon after I…
The last from the productive pond dip photography session. I got my best over of a few more species: Cloen dipterum Mayfly nymph. Agraylea multipunctata Micro caddisfly larva And wandering pond snail.
A couple more species from my pond photos. First up an anopheline mosquito larvae. These larvae have the top of the body at the waters surface, unlike the culicine mosquito larvae which have just their breathing tube. This made a reflection shot easier. I also got a head on shot. I also got a couple…
Here is an image of a hawker dragonfly nymph that has just shed its skin (hence the light colouration), that I took using my photographic aquarium. I managed to increase the depth of field by using image stacking (combining a few images focused at different distances).
While at Rainham Marshes we noticed a fair few male migrant hawkers patrolling territories. The light wasn’t great and neither was the angle from the boardwalks so we didn’t bother with them. But then we found a spot where we could get to their level with the sun behind us, only for the sun to…