Ryton Wood and Country Park sept 25th

A return visit to Ryton wood the following sunday,  i wanted to have a good look around the wood and the country park which i didn't manage to do on the last "fun" trip!  lol
I started off walking into the wood area along a narrow path with loads of devils bit scabious flowers, so should find something to shoot.   the weather was not great , overcast with drizzle so didn't expect to find many insects on the flowers early on , but to my surprise i found a large bumble bee feeding.  i did not recognise this species and had not seen one similar before.  the light was not very good so had to shoot at iso 640 and f5.6 to get a decent 1/160th shutter speed. 
This bee has been identified as a Tree Bumble Bee   bombus hypnorum , a species that was only found in this country i believe in 2001 in the south and has been spreading northwards.

As i walked further into the wood  pictured below,   not knowing where i was going   lol

  I managed to find a few ladybirds to shoot,  here is one i found on a dead tree stump and had to bury the mpe lens into the moss to get a nice low angle to get a nice composition!
This is a single frame at f13   full flash  mpe-65 at about x2 magnification full frame 5d2

It was while i was shooting this image i received a text from Gill , she had arrived at the car park and obviously having seen my car and wanted to know if i was here and where i was!!!
 Stupid question i thought at the time, especially because i was by now completely LOST!    yes she thought that was hilarious!     she still hadnt given me a map! lol    i would meet her later on in the country park where she was continuing the brown hairstreak egg survey.

Here is another shot taken from in the wood., this particular area is where i will find my first ever purple hairstreak eggs a couple weeks time.  another blog to be written!

This is where i found a my second acorn weevil,   after finding one on the last trip to ryton meadows.

here is the cute tiny weevil on my finger !

and on a leaf!

I eventually found my way out of the wood after about an hour!    and walked into the country park to find Gill,  just moments after she had found a triple brown hairstreak egg cluster on the blackthorn.

Here i am shooting the egg cluster [ photos shot by Gill  ]

As you can see, i am holding the stem in my left hand while resting the mpe lens on same hand, if my hand moves both camera and stem move together so stay aligned when shooting the individual frames for the focus stack.

Here is the resulting finished focus stacked egg image, each egg is approx 0.7 mm diameter!

After shooting this we spent all afternoon having fun searching the country park and surrounding area for more eggs,while getting slashed by brambles and spiked from blackthorns  lol   it is actually great fun, believe me!!!!!!!

later in the early evening i shot the trees that had just started to change colour ,and then...

Gillian kindly let me shoot her portrait in the beautiful warm evening light !

She thinks the colour is too strong, but i think this represents the light perfectly , when compared to a shot taken a few minutes earlier which looked very cold !

a perfect end to a great day :)

all shots taken with canon 5d2, 100mmL macro and mpe-65