JC's Traveblog

Thankfully, September has begun much better than August ended – well, than August was all the way through, to be accurate. While one of us remained chez nous awaiting a delivery, I took myself and my camera gear over to visit a place we’d been told about by one of Carol’s Greensand Trust colleagues intending to maximize my use of the late summer sunshine. The place in question was Cornmill Meadows in the Lee Valley Park and, just north of Waltham Abbey, it boasts a dragonfly sanctuary. Irresistible!

After a mere two wrong turns (I still don’t have a satnav and my Navigation Officer was at home waiting for stuff), I finally arrived at my intended car park. The car park was surprisingly, free – things were getting better and better. A notice board at the exit to the car park announced, “Dragonfly Walk”, and suggested that I follow the way marks. I set off along the path but, try as I might, I could find nothing that I would call a way marking sign: no posts, no arrows on tree trunks, nothing. I did bump into a river with paths going left and right, however. Though there were still no signs, there was an unusually cooperative Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis) hanging in the tree beside the river right in front of me. These guys are tireless flyers and seem to stop only rarely. It was half hidden by a leaf but it was an opportunity, nonetheless.

I flipped a mental coin and turned right. After a few hundred yards I came to another dividing of the ways and a bridge over the river. There was a public footpath sign but again no “Dragonfly Walk” sign. Since the footpath seemed to be heading back towards the road, I crossed the bridge. Here, without an arrow to indicate direction, was another notice board saying “follow the Dragonfly Walk to learn more”. “I’d love to. Where is it?”, I muttered. There were two paths, both of which went alongside streams so I flipped my mental coin again and moved on.

I must have done something right ‘cos I was soon watching some fabulous Banded Demoiselles (Calopteryx splendens) flitting about in the sunlight. In common with most damselflies, these chaps sit with their wings folded along the length of their abdomen. However, occasionally, often just after they have alighted, they flick their wings open once or twice, almost as though they are flexing their muscles. With a little patience, timing and luck, you can catch them with their wings open on pixels. After a few failures, I struck lucky. On the left is the female of the species with clear, greenish tinted wings. On the right, the male showing off its striking metallic blue-green  colour.

Continuing along the path after thanking the Banded Demoiselles, I came to another notice board mentioning the “Dragonfly Walk”. More by luck than judgement, I seemed to have happened across the correct path. The correct path produced quite a few of the “usual suspects”, Common Darters (Sympetrum striolatum) and Ruddy Darters (Sympetrum sanguineum), which I’m getting a little blasé about, but there was also quite a bit of hawker activity. Along most of the walk the hawkers were so restless that I couldn’t make an id. Then, on a stretch of the return route, I hit pay dirt. Several hawkers were not only picking spots in which to hover, but were sometimes alighting on grass stems on my side of the river. I now know that they are Migrant Hawkers (Aeshna mixta), one of the so-called “mosaic hawkers”, and what magnificent creatures they are. Twice I tried to tear myself away and twice I returned, captivated.

All good things must come to an end, though, and eventually I tore myself away so I could return to fire up the September barbecue. It’s possible to while away several pleasant hours at Cornmill Meadows. I will return though it may have to wait until next season, now.

For me, the summer school holidays are something to be endured. We endure it by being at home leaving the rest of the normally civilized world to be invaded by ear-shattering screamers. However, last summer I added dragonfly and damselfly (collectively, Odonata) spotting to my long-standing love of butterfly spotting and had a great time pursuing my new-found hobby at local nature reserves. Last year was a terrific year for butterflies with a diverse population being boosted by a quite well publicized “invasion” from the continent of Painted Ladies. Being a complete novice, I had no previous experience of Odonata levels but I did find a lot of activity.

This year, I was looking forward to some repeat nature spotting rather than thinking that half my summer had been hijacked. It seems to have been a tough year for our poor ol’ butterfly population. I’ve lost count of the number of sizeable Buddleia bushes I’ve seen without a single butterfly feeding on them. In fact, I’m hard pressed to recall any Buddleia with a butterfly on it. I suspect that our last, particularly harsh winter was at least partly responsible. On top of a bad winter, late July and August have been pants too, weather-wise.

Having said that, I did get out to our local Sandhouse Lane Nature reserve once or twice on days that were half-way reasonable. The level of Odonata activity definitely seemed lower than last year but a few of the more usual suspects were busily trying to make up for the apparent shortfall in population. The way most dragonflies go about adding to the population is that the male of the species spots a willing female of the species and grabs her by the neck using his appendages – projections from his abdomen designed for grabbing ladies around the neck. They are now in the so-called tandem formation. Eventually, still held firmly by the neck, the female curves her abdomen around and under the male to marry her vulvar scale to his secondary sex organ. The resulting circular formation is often called the copulation wheel or, perhaps more romantically, the copulation heart. Damselflies, in particular, form a very definite heart shape.

The most populous dragonfly species at Sandhouse Lane seems to be the Ruddy Darter. On my earlier (and sunnier) trip I had snapped a pair of Ruddy Darters “in tandem” preparing to mate. As usual in the animal world, it is the male dragonfly that is the more colourful and, as a result, often more readily identified. The female tends to be somewhat more drab, often brown/beige/dull yellow, and rather more similar looking. I have, in the past, frequently relied upon the fact that a female is firmly attached to a male to confirm an identification. Here, also confirmed by good old iSpot, is my sunlit tandem pair of Ruddy Darters.

As well as Ruddy Darters, Sandhouse Lane plays home to a population of Common Darters. On a subsequent and less sunny visit, once again I spotted a Ruddy Darter male firmly grasping a female by the neck. I again snapped the tandem pair, just because I could. Upon later study, I thought the female exhibited a different colouration from that in my first pair. In fact, this female looked more the colour of a male Common Darter. “Arghh! Wait – don’t panic!” I spotted that, colour aside, this specimen’s abdomen shape confirmed it to be female. All was well. I added it to iSpot to see if this apparent colour variation of the female might be age-related; they do, sometimes, darken and change with age.

Good decision! it transpires that this poor old male Ruddy Darter had, in fact, grabbed a female Common Darter by the neck. Well, at least he’d got the sex right, if not the species. What a turn up for the books. One of the resident specialists on iSpot had observed this sort of mismatch before but hadn’t got a decent photograph of such a pairing. Having put me straight, he requested a copy of the picture which I was happy to provide.

So, no more identifying females just because they are attached to a male.

We’ve been back from La Belle France for about six weeks now and it seems a little like a distant memory. Despite our suffering worse weather than we’d hoped, we did seem to reuse quite a lot of pixels on our wildlife and nature interests. We were lucky enough to see several species new to us and our catalogues have grown substantially. In that respect, it was a very successful trip.

It’s been a long and laborious process but I’ve finally managed to update our insect web albums. Not wishing to make any single album soporifically large, I’ve now separated butterflies from moths, and dragonflies from damselflies.

Those sharing my love of six-footed friends can see more than these two preview shots in the updated web albums here:

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Butterflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Moths 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Dragonflies 

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Damselflies

I’ve written previously about liking the powerful effect a black background lends to some photographic images. This year, in France, we were in a position to get a few such images again. Once more it was, of course, more by luck than design. In this case, luck came in the form of a shaded woodland walk beside the very first few kilometres of La Rigole, a purpose built small canal feeding water into the Canal du Midi. Bright sunlight filtering through broad-leafed trees is a typically high contrast situation and, hey presto, some very dark backgrounds become possible.

La Rigole gave us our first encounters with Beautiful Demoiselles. That’s a  pretty crappy but nonetheless appropriate English name, in my opinion. Let’s give such a splendid creature its equally splendid Latin name: Calopteryx virgo. They proved to be a little awkward to photograph in some respects, insisting usually on sitting directly facing the sun. Consequently, the magnificent metallic blue of the males’ wings tended to be unlit. Eventually, though, I found one sitting on a pleasantly sunlit leaf  in front of a very shadowy rock beside the water. I confess that I have been a little naughtier than my usual self and cloned out a small but distracting blurred leaf that was inconsiderate enough to intrude into the frame at top left. The black is entirely natural, though.

I didn’t realize I’d be getting a dark background in this second example. The subject was an unknown critter to me and I was simply anxious to photograph it to add to my insect catalogue. The critter in question turned out to be a Hawthorn Shield Bug. It had the good grace and foresight to pose on a particularly artistic fern leaf – I just love that gracious curve up into the corner of the frame – with no surrounding clutter, poised above a wonderfully dark stretch of La Rigole.

If only all insects were as cooperative and photographically inclined.

We’re getting there – we’ve nearly waded through all our outstanding photographs from both our recent French trip and from the wedding we attended a week after returning. At least now the photographs are not on real film, I didn’t have to sit scanning hundreds of pictures in.

This year’s trip to France was not great as regards weather but, in my opinion at least, the wildlife helped to make up for it. We didn’t see some of the birds we would normally expect to see at springtime (bee-eaters, golden orioles) but I did manage to add substantially to the contents of my insect catalogues.

I’ve always been captivated by butterflies. Even as a child I collected Brooke Bond PG Tips cards and my favourite collection was the butterflies. As a child in Watford, though, I never seemed to see anything exotic myself; the cards and books were my only contact with much other than the ubiquitous Large White (a.k.a. Cabbage White). As a result, having begun regular pilgrimages to France, my eyes couldn’t help but be drawn to colourful butterflies that I’d never before seen. I was quite likely to slam the brakes on (having checked the rear-view mirror, of course), leap from the car and chase headlong across a field after a fluttering beauty.

Most captivating of all was undoubtedly the so-called Scarce Swallowtail. It really is a strikingly beautiful creature. It is also one of the more cooperative butterflies in that it sits with its wings open at rest. The picture (right) is from the days of real film (50 ASA Fuji Velvia). The Scarce Swallowtail doesn’t visit our shores but, it seemed to me, one didn’t have to go far south in France before the strangely named Scarce Swallowtail became relatively common. Not a French trip went by without my seeing at least one. There is a (regular) Swallowtail which is, apparently, a rare visitor to Britain but I had never  knowingly seen one anywhere. Had I suspected that one was about, I would undoubtedly have checked the rear-view mirror, slammed on the anchors and leapt out excitedly.

At least, that was the case until this year. This year, not only did I not see any Scarce Swallowtails but I finally saw and captured (photographically, that is) a couple of (regular) Swallowtails. The first was flitting about frenetically  on a plateau at about 1400m in the Pyrenees. The second was hungrily feeding in the Gorge de la Frau. Well, if you’re going to flit about frenetically, you have to feed well, I suppose. This time captured digitally (800 ASA pixels), here is what I consider to be my best shot.

Finally, and just because I was lucky enough to snag a Swallow in flight on this year’s trip, here is the bird after which both these fabulous creatures are named. The Scarce Swallowtail has longer “streamers”, more like the bird but, in a beauty contest, it would be hard to  pick a winner, wouldn’t it?

Fortunately, we don’t have to.

We are both a little snowed under with digital images at the moment. One week after returning from a seven week trip around France, we went to a friend’s wedding and banged off several hundred more photos. Consequently, it is taking us a while to filter out the rubbish. However, while Carol works on a wedding album, I am making some progress on our French web album.

With both of us clicking away at critters large and small, some of my progress requires the use of iSpot of which I have become a HUGE fan. We don’t always know precisely what we’ve captured on pixels and wouldn’t want to misreport what we’ve seen. The wonderful folks at iSpot usually clear things up and frequently give more information than is found in our field guides, so another big thank you to them.

As keen as we both are on nature, we do, of course, recognize that it isn’t always pretty. This last trip seemed to produce a larger than usual bag of somewhat macabre sights that we were “privileged” to witness. Of course, for the most part these situations are just nature taking its course with one subsection, the predators, trying to live of another subsection, the prey.

The first instance provides an opportunity to use a picture that is interesting enough but, perhaps, not quite good enough for a trip web album, largely because the subject was too distant, even for TheBeast, and going away (now there’s a surprise). A black kite swooped down on our favourite camp site lake, the sheep farm at Fanjeaux, and is clearly flying off with some hapless victim in its talons. You can see the head down examining its catch. The lake is teeming with thousands of frogs but there are also fish, as we shall shortly see.

Continuing in the less-disturbing vein, on one of farmer Luc’s walks, while I was off chasing very active butterfly prey harmlessly with pixels, Carol spotted a relatively small spider apparently tucking into a butterfly, more specifically a Clouded Yellow. I have no idea what species the spider could be but I may try iSpot to see if the good folks there can enlighten me. Being a fan of butterflies, it isn’t my favourite image but the spider is just doing what comes naturally. Last year we saw a very large Garden Spider tucking into my other favourite, a damselfly.

Now the feint-hearted should, perhaps, look away. In addition to literally thousands of frogs and some fish, our lake (we get very possessive about it) contained at least one water snake. One day we spotted it swimming along with a fish (a perch, I believe) in its mouth. It seemed to be having trouble with the size of its “prey item”. It struggled about over some weed but eventually left the lifeless fish alone, uneaten. What a waste! A day or so later, while stalking dragonflies and damselflies by la digue (the dyke) that retains the lake, we spotted a snake, perhaps the same one, tackling a humongous tadpole. These tadpoles were the Goliaths of tadpoles, being at least 3 ins/9 cms long with v. large heads. Those with a strong enough stomach may be able to see that the poor tadpole, still alive, has a fair sized hole in the top of its head and quite a bit of skin missing. Once again, the snake seemed to give up on its over-sized prey and left it to die a slow death.

Finally to something a little different. This has nothing to do with making a living; it just seemed to be parent brutality. The lake was home to a number of breeding waterfowl, amongst them a family of Coots with seven chicks. After watching them for a week or so we noticed one parent biting the head of one of its chicks, for no readily apparent reason. It happened several times. I assume that it was the same chick but I have no evidence to that effect. I used iSpot and was told that this behaviour is not uncommon with Coots and that they will occasionally pick on a chick until it stops following them around and, presumably, perishes. One comment from iSpot was, “it’s hard to like Coots”. I know what they mean. Maybe this has something to do with clutch size? We don’t know. Both parents were otherwise very attentive and tireless feeders of their brood. Peculiar!

[Ed: I think I’m going to have to call this Retroblog.]

A couple of years ago we were fortunate enough to have our camping pitch in the south of France (Montagnac) used by several cicadas for their emergence, their transformation into consenting adults. Since we were on top of the action in that case, I managed to record the sequence on my trusty old film camera. It is still in our web album section and remains a highlight of our contact with wildlife.

Dragonflies have a very similar lifecycle except that, whereas cicada larvae live underground for many years, dragonfly larvae live underwater for a  somewhat less time. The actual time seems to vary  by species but a year or two seems typical.

Dragonflies abound at our favourite French sheep farm campsite from which we have recently returned. This year I had noticed several husk on the outside wall of les sanitaires (the toilet and shower block) and had wondered if they might be bush crickets or some such. Dragonfly exuviae (larval cases) never occurred to me since they looked too small and, most importantly, were some distance from the lakeside. When ready to emerge, I thought dragonfly larvae clambered out of the water up the nearest suitable grass stem and performed their magical transformation right there. Not always, it seems.

One morning Carol rushed excitedly back to our pitch announcing that a dragonfly was emerging right now. Not for the first time in history, I shot off towards the toilet block armed with a camera, monopod and long lens. Why do insects continually encourage me into such freedom-threatening situations?  What is it about toilet blocks that attracts them? I really am going to get arrested one day.

Regrettably I had missed the actual emergence from the larval case and the new soon-to-be adult was hanging on it, as they do. Here, however, is a slightly reduced sequence of the wings and abdomen developing into the full-sized adult. It’s a Black-tailed Skimmer, by the way, but I can’t tell if it’s a female or a male since both start out a similar colour. Incidentally, young males are called teneral males.

… and back online after a long break. The break was caused by my being encouraged not to blog whilst travelling because we (well, Carol) had read some disturbing nonsense about insurance companies using published absence as a potential excuse to decline claims should wandering burglars happen by. A sad world, isn’t it?

Anyway, here we are again. Our 7-week trip was decidedly indifferent [Ed: that’s being kind – it was crap.] vis-a-vis the weather. For some time the silly old Mediterranean seemed to attract and hold firmly on to some nasty storm system so we had quite a bit of rain. Fortunately, we didn’t have as much rain as the poor people in the Vars region who suffered fatal flooding. The French newspapers didn’t seem to be able to believe the conditions for a couple of weeks, either. Mon Dieu, c’est grave. Eventually, however, meteorological sanity returned, normal service was resumed and our final three weeks were gloriously sunny and, sometimes, almost too hot (35°C/95°F).

Largely due to the vagaries weather, we stayed put for longer than anticipated in one particular site and didn’t try much new. As a result, our scenery photography suffered a little though Carol did finally get a few worthwhile shots in the Pyrenees. ‘T was a very educational trip for nature and wildlife, however, and we’ve returned with far too many images of critters and plants. Carol has added greatly to her wild plants catalogue and I to my Lepidoptera and Odonata catalogues. Once the marathon job of sorting and sifting is done, a selected set will be published as usual.

Meanwhile, this was my first trip away armed with TheBeast so I was keen to try a few new things. After an awful lot of failed attempts, I did finally manage to catch some birds in flight. Darwin, aren’t swallows fast!? The night heron was much more co-operative though it did seem a little confused about the time of day. To be fair, the book only says they are mostly active at night, and it was evening (hence the quality of the light).

We spent our last three weeks at our oft-visited sheep farm in Fanjeaux. It has a lake overrun with frogs which is, I suspect, what attracts the herons. There are also fish, now that the lake has been restocked after what seemed to be a localized near-extinction event.  One evening the lake was visited by a cruising black kite and, though the picture isn’t great, I can’t resist using it because it has clearly caught something in its talons.

Maybe I’m going to need a new name to replace Traveblog?

So, as I said, on Wednesday we spun over to Harwich to drop Keith and Marlene at the port where they were due to embark on Jewel of the Seas for their cruise through the Baltic Sea to Russia and back. They’d have been happy to go by train but Carol was keen to visit a first cousin once removed so we forced them to endure a cross country 2½ hour trip in our car. It’s gotta beat lugging four pieces of luggage though London.

We saw Jewel of the Seas long before we saw any of Harwich. The land around Harwich is pretty darn flat and this vessel towered above it. It wouldn’t look out of place orbiting Jupiter. It’s huge! It has (it says here) 12 passenger decks for 2501 passengers (and 1?) served by 859 crew. It looks like several decent sized hotels bolted together and sat in a hull. We managed to drop Keith and Marlene off with little in the way of ceremony – there was no waiting – and left them to embark and search for their cabin. This is where a satnav system could truly come in handy – key in the postcode of your suite/cabin, select shortest route, and off you go.

Off we went to investigate Harwich, once we’d found it hiding behind the Jewel of the Seas. ‘T was an interesting little town in a threadbare sort of way. It looked a little worn at the edges. Come to that, it looked a little worn in the middle, too. I did, however, sample the finest jellied eels that I can remember tasting; they were quite superb. We also got an education about “leading lights”. There are two lighthouses: the higher and lower lighthouses. As an approaching ship, the idea was to position your vessel in such a way that the higher lighthouse’s light  could be seen directly above the lower lighthouse’s light. This alignment led you into the harbour channel. Simple but effective, I would imagine. Not as much fun as a satnav, though.

Harwich also makes a big deal about being the original home of Christopher Jones, master of the Mayflower of pilgrims fame. We found his house on the Harwich heritage trail but it didn’t make an enticing picture.

Having killed enough time being thoroughly educated – I also learned that a pint and a half of Hoegaarden could set one back £7.90 – £7.90 for Chrissakes! – we went to visit Carol’s cousin on Shotley peninsula, the opposite side of the harbour. When Jewel of the Seas began sounding off, we all repaired to where we could watch the ship leave and wave goodbye to our friends. As we waited I practiced panning with TheBeast (handheld, IS mode 2) and managed to grab a reasonable shot of a black-headed gull which was cruising by the harbour wall in the early evening sun. They have such beautiful white eye-liner, black-headed gulls.

Eventually the floating moon of Jupiter approached and Carol grabbed a shot of it dwarfing Harwich. We waved. There’s no way Keith and Marlene could have seen us waving but we did it anyway. Well, you have to, don’t you?

Bon voyage Keith and Marlene!

Keith’s birthday. that is: today. Keith doesn’t “do” birthdays. Keith doesn’t do birthdays so much that he doesn’t even know in which month his parents birthdays fall. Curious. In order not to do Keith’s birthday today, since it was a good day for walking (i.e. dry) we all sauntered two miles along the Grand Union Canal to The Three Locks where Keith & Marlene very kindly treated us to some jolly fine burgers washed down by a drink or two. Thank you very much, Keith & Marlene.

We sauntered the two miles back along the canal and sat briefly on our patio where those unaccustomed to walking four miles in one day began to recover.

On the house above our patio we have a nesting box. It is currently the scene of some frenetic feeding activity by our resident blue tit and its partner. I say resident because, above our patio, in addition to a nest box, we also have a bat box in which one of our nesting pair of blue tits roosts. It has been roosting in our bat box for several years. We know it is the very same blue tit because it has a distinctively misshapen chest stripe. We suspect that Zigzag Chest is a male because of his apparent territorial displays and his still flying around during incubation.

Fortunately the desire to keep delivering a constant supply of food to their young seems to overcome the blue tits’ fear of us so I took the opportunity to set my camera up on the patio mounted on a tripod and armed with “The Beast” complete, for the very first time, with its 1.4X extender. The extender forces the use of manual focus but, with my subject being a fixed target, this constituted an ideal situation.

My first shot proved that I needed fill-in flash – thank Darwin for digital preview screens. I added my flash gun to my growing array of deployed camera equipment. Another few shots indicated that I could benefit from a stop or so of under-exposure. Eventually I was getting shots with which I was comfortable. I clicked away for half an hour or so then left the diligent little nesters in peace, with thanks.

Once loaded on the computer and reviewed, I was very pleased with the results from The Beast plus extender. [Let’s use Java nomenclature and call this combination TheBeast++.] On the RAW images, the blue tits’ individual feather filaments show very nicely and, of particular interest I think, is being able to see the food items being delivered to the nest. Hopefully these smaller JPEGs are nearly as clear. I’ve reproduced one shot (far right) that isn’t the greatest line up but it does clearly show, grasped in the blue tit’s beak, the legs, body segments and wings of some hapless flying creature about to become lunch for junior. The images are full frame, just squared off to remove irrelevant sides.

Happy birthday Keith and well done TheBeast++.