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

Since the sun had decided to grace us with its presence for just about the first time in a few weeks, yesterday I took a break from trying to organize French wildlife in favour of trying to catch, photographically of course, some English wildlife. I took myself off to my favourite local location, Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve. It’s so great because, more often than not, I’m the only one there. That is, I’m the only mammalian biped there. Such was the case yesterday, although I think my six-legged friends were equally pleased to see the sun because there was some pretty frenetic insect activity.

Over the pond, Brown Hawkers (Aeshna grandis) were the first positive sign I saw as two or three tirelessly patrolled above the water. They didn’t seem too fussy about what they’d chase in the hope of a meal, even drifting seeds which, of course, they rejected. Quite frequently times they seemed to chase each other, much of which I’m sure is territorial aggression, but I did begin to wonder if they would actually be cannibalistic. I tried fruitlessly to catch one in flight but, alas, they didn’t seem to go into a hover. So intent was I on watching them hunt, that I almost missed one ovipositing in the pond almost at my feet. Hmm, maybe they weren’t chasing each other to be cannibalistic after all?

More action soon followed as a tandem pair of Ruddy Darters (Sympetrum sanguineum) positioned themselves perfectly on a leaf quite close to me. How generous of them. Sometimes standing still and waiting for the dragonflies to come to me seems to be more productive than going to them. In practice, of course, both techniques are required. Clearly the sun really was working magic as the tandem pair adopted the copulation wheel formation.

In good conditions, it is usual to see dragonflies and damselflies mating. I suspect that this is a feature of their precarious life as an adult; as soon as conditions turn favourable, there is a general rush to reproduce.

Right, where’s that sun?

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!

A pair of swans has been nesting beside a bridge over the Grand Union Canal close to our house. On Thursday last week I noticed that the little grey balls of fluff had hatched. On Friday en route to a pub lunch I went armed with a camera but, to my surprise, the family had swum the nest. That was quick.

Today we took our cameras on a more serious search looking along the canal towards town. Finally we found them, both parents and eight cygnets, just before a lock about a mile “upstream”. They seemed unconcerned as we began clicking away, perhaps because their nest had been adjacent to a car park where admirers frequently gathered.

Whilst people seemed to cause the swans little concern, ducks were another issue. There was an explosion of activity as the cob suddenly got in a flap over a mallard’s proximity, took to the wing and chased it back along the canal skimming the water all the way.

With father absent, the pen and cygnets continued swimming around apparently unconcerned. We watched fascinated as a couple of the cygnets began scrambling up onto mother’s back and nestled down to hitch a ride between her wings. This is not behaviour that we’d ever witnessed before in swans though we had seen a grebe chick riding on a parent’s back. Sometimes the cygnets seemed to be sheltering but occasionally one or two heads would pop out to look around. Naturally, given the fluffy subjects, two cygnets riding pillion on their graceful mother’s back was an endearing site.

Father eventually returned in shower of water droplets having left the mallard in no doubt that its presence was not appreciated.

Ya just gotta love wildlife.

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++.

I really should know better. On Monday we set off on plan A with Keith and Marlene. I can’t remember what plan A was but I do remember thinking that my camera would not be required. After a mere 5 minutes or so my navigation officer switched to plan B. We ended up driving round some of our typically English village and local countryside locations such as Ivinghoe Beacon and Ashridge.

En route from Ivinghoe Beacon to Ashridge are a couple of stunning bluebell woods, one of which attracts an almost constant flow of admirers; so many admirers that an ice cream van stations itself opposite and does a brisk trade, even in our currently wintery airflow.  However, what made us slam on the brakes was the other, less popular wood which, this year, seems to have come of age and eclipsed its more popular neighbour. What set this wood apart was a lack of other people and a lack of dead wood spoiling an otherwise good line up. Keith and Marlene, hitherto unfamiliar with bluebells, clicked away with their pocket digitals while all I could do was pick out shots I’d like to take had I been sensible enough to bring my camera. Lose 10 points. Marlene kindly let me try a shot or two with her camera but I failed to hold the small camera steady enough in my klutzy hands. We continued the tour.

K & M had expressed an interest in the stunningly yellow rape fields that are currently turning our countryside into something out of Vincent Van Gogh’s notebook. We thought we knew just the spot for another photo shoot. I again borrowed Marlene’s camera with only slightly better results.

On Tuesday afternoon, while others decided to relax at home under the occasional glowering cloud, I corrected my original oversight and returned to both the bluebell wood and rape field armed with camera, lenses and tripod. After only 5 minutes or so I had the bluebell wood to myself and did two circuits merrily re-using pixels as though they were going out of fashion. Eventually a couple of other tripods arrived with their owners and began doing likewise. Our tripods compared notes before I took mine off to the rape field where I managed to grab a single shot before one of the glowering clouds obliterated the celestial spotlight. I’ve tried rape fields before and always been disappointed but at last I seem to have something with which I’m satisfied.

Isn’t spring a colourful time of year and shouldn’t I know by now always to travel with a camera? Dumbo!

One early start a week is, it seems, not enough. Having awoken on Thursday at 5:00 AM to get down to Heathrow and collect our friends, Keith and Marlene Stillman from Richmond, Virginia, today we were roused from sleep at 4:00 AM to go and be guided on a dawn chorus walk listening to the birds waking up. Naturally, we sneaked out quietly and left K & M finishing their sleep. Naturally also, it was raining and pretty gloomy. Nonetheless the walk was well attended by nearly 20 fellow idiots and, despite the weather, the birds cooperated by singing to stake their claims to their prospective patches. After two hours we returned to warm up and begin our second unreasonably early activity.

Keith loves steam trains and had discovered that our newish steam locomotive, the Tornado, was travelling up from Kings Cross to Leeds and back today. It was supposed to be hitting Stevenage at 9:05 AM so we decided to drive to Arlesey, a few miles north of Stevenage to see it. I also thought I’d try a photograph with a slow shutter speed shot for some motion blur. I figured about 9:15 AM at Arlesey would be good and, wanting to allow for traffic and finding a legal parking place, we left at 7:45 AM.

There was no traffic; we arrived at Arlesey around 8:15 AM. Our first try produced a good parking spot, too. Keith and I scouted the position at the station; access was unrestricted and we could pick our platform to afford the best view. Not only was it damp but it was also cold, only 8°C, so we returned to the car to keep warm and wait the 45 minutes.

9:00 AM: Sauntered back to the platform and began waiting.

9:10 AM: Another old gentleman arrived to watch and began brain-dumping incomprehensible steam loco data. I listened and attempted to smile at the right points.

9:30 AM: No train, drizzle, cold hands, cold feet.

9:45 AM: A few other “enthusiasts” arrived. Looking more promising. Feet and hands very cold.

9:50 AM: Mobile phone rang – Carol (on opposing platform) had heard that the train had been “rescheduled”; now expected Stevenage at 10:00 AM.

10:00 AM: Hands and feet most closely resembled blocks of ice.

10:15 AM: Hypothermia felt uncomfortably close.

10:17 AM: Action on opposing platform indicated that something might be happening.

10:17:09 AM: A train is approaching very fast. Yikes, it’s the Tornado!

10:17:11 AM: Hurriedly raised camera to eye – frozen finger stabbed button for attempted blurred shot.

10:17:12 AM: Again released shutter – finger probably frozen to camera – as train now level with me.

10:17:20 AM: Rear of train disappears into distance.

10:18 AM: Frozen feet begin plodding back off platform and back to car.

Ye Gods that was fast! It was also very quiet; no “chuff, chuff”, no rattling, no nothing. The electric trains had been noisier. Weird!

A 4:00 AM start followed by an hour and a half on a freezing platform for approximately 10 seconds of action. Fortunately, Keith took a sensible photograph.

One useful diversion for me during the last colder and longer than usual winter was designing and building a website for our local U3A (University of the 3rd Age). I built it using my favourite piece of blogging/Content Management System software, WordPress. My efforts were well received and my customers seemed very pleased – so pleased, in fact, that they bought me (us – Carol was included) tickets to see one of my heroes, Andy Rouse. Most unfortunately, Carol had to attend a family funeral on the day in question and couldn’t make it so I took along Steve, one of the U3A committee members, who had procured the tickets and seemed very interested in Andy’s work.

Andy Rouse is my favourite professional wildlife photographer and is currently touring with his 10 year anniversary presentation; touring, that is, between his photographic trips abroad. Venues are a little restricted, as were our possible dates for attending, so the closest that could be arranged was last Thursday in Ascot hosted by the Bracknell Camera Club. Arrive at 7:30 PM for an 8:00 PM kick-off, it said. Since the M25 is currently full of road works and even worse than normal, I allowed two hours and chose the cross-country route through Princes Risborough and High Wycombe. We arrived in time to enjoy a pre-presentation curry in Ascot.

Andy is a very dynamic showman who clearly loves presenting almost as much as he loves his subjects and photographing them. The show, and show it was, essentially summarizes his 10 years as a professional using a wide selection of his favourite or more illustrative images. It was far from all talk; Andy presented a couple of sequences animated to music (the pictures, not Andy), together with a couple of bits of video, all of which added to the dynamism. It was very educational: I now know a whole lot more about toilet arrangements in the opposing extremes of the African savannah and the Arctic than I did before. Of course, essentially it comes down to his awe-inspiring photographs, though. Seeing his images, some of which were sized to a mere 500 pixels, projected onto what must have been a 20ft screen and remaining pin sharp was a joyful experience. I have a vivid image of a snowy owl in flight, side on, turning its head to fix the camera with a piercing yellow stare, its wings on the limit of the downbeat and all absolutely frozen, crystal clear. Quite amazing! I lost count of the times I muttered, “how on earth did you do that?” under my breath. The show lasted about two hours (plus an intermission) and I think they were the shortest two hours of my life. I was utterly captivated.

The really nice thing about Andy Rouse is that he is as much, if not more, conservationist as he is photographer. He exhibits and preaches great respect for all his subjects. “I care about the animals but I don’t care about the camera kit”, he said at one point having recently dropped almost £20K-worth of Nikon equipment into two pockets of a safari-type vest and set off towards Rwanda’s mountain gorillas. Well, discard it in this direction, Andy, not that I could come close to doing it justice.

His latest book, Tigers, a Celebration of Life, is on sale and donates 25% of its profits to tiger conservation. Since tigers have long been my own personal favourites of the animal kingdom, I had to buy a copy. Because poor Carol couldn’t make it, I asked Andy to sign it to her. Having missed out on a most entertaining evening due to a funeral, a book subtitled “A Celebration of Life” seemed particularly appropriate.