Some photos from a couple of places I visited on 28 March 2026, Northcliffe Wood and Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits Local Nature Reserve – one of the Wharfedale Naturalists Nature Reserves.
The header image is a head-on view of a male Broad Bodied Chaser dragonfly resting at the new small pond at Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits. You can see more related posts here – Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits LNR.
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Northcliffe Wood
On this visit I only had time to walk up into the wood, look around for a few minutes, then set off back. But I did manage to spot a Treecreeper and get a photo of one of several Great Spotted Woodpecker that were around. There were also Jays, Blackbirds, Great Tits, Blue Tits, Ring Necked Parakeets, and several others around.
Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits Local Nature Reserve
These photos from Ben Rhydding Gravel Pits Local Nature Reserve are, apart from one photo of the Broad Bodies Chaser, all in the order in which they were taken.
The things I found most interesting were:-
- The Mayfly looking as though it was being eaten by the Spider.
- The pair of Brimstone butterflies flitting about with the female sticking her body up in the air.
- The mass of flying insects in various levels of focus in the same frame as the Mayflies in flight. Given that there would only a few centimetres over which the insects would be visible before being too out of focus the numbers of them must be phenomenal.
- The empty gall of the Bramble-stem Gall Wasp, Diastrophus rubi. I have not seen one before.
Track
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