I made a visit to Stanwick Lakes near Wellingborough recently, with friends from The Wildlife Art Society. Thankfully the weather was pretty sunny, though quite breezy.
We saw many families of birds with youngsters, including greylag geese goslings, mute swan cygnets and mallard ducklings.

At last the spring weather had improved, and there were newly emerged butterflies, like the lovely Common Blue, as well as many bumble bees of several types.
These were hovering around the wild flowers meadows,with buttercups, oxe-eye daisies, clover, self-heal and flowering grasses to attract them.




There were also many damselflies and quantities of banded demoiselles basking on nettle leaves near the river, with fantastic iridescent bodies.
With such a wealth of life to see, I'm sure I'll be using the reference in some future work.
I'm fascinated by the wings of damselflies and dragonflies, and have been working on a series of pictures developing this theme.