Tag Archives: damselflies

An unusual day this so-called spring is one in which it doesn’t rain. My 94-year old mother uses a Dial-a-Ride scheme to get into town and the driver on her last trip observed, rather wittily I thought, that this was the wettest drought he’d ever known. A pleasant day is one of the aforementioned unusual days on which the sun deigns to put in a few brief appearances between the continuing rather heavy cloud cover. A good day is one of those rare pleasant days in which the temperature staggers up to something approaching the seasonal norm, say 16°C or so. Today met my good day parameters so we decided to go Odo hunting in the hope that they, too, would think it worth emerging.

About 20kms/13mls away is Marston Vale’s Forest Centre complete with a wetland reserve looking like a decent dragonfly hang out. It’s relatively new and certainly new to us so we went for our first exploration. Happily, on entering the wetland area, we met a fellow nature enthusiast who shepherded us around a few likely spots to get us started. He did, however, preface this by saying that he hadn’t potted any Odos during his visit. After he left us, expecting the worst we nonetheless continued, largely for the exercise and familiarization.

We continued to draw a blank until, in a sheltered spot about half way around the main lake, Carol caused someone to flutter up from the grass. It eventually settled on a hawthorn bush and was undoubtedly a damselfly. Not the most accessible of locations but I managed to get there without shaking its perch too many times. I was expecting to end up focussing on another Large Red (Pyrrhosoma nymphula).

As my camera came into focus this was clearly not a Large Red. The old recognition skills get a bit rusty over winter [Ed: in this bloody weather, everything gets rusty.] so I was initially undecided as to whether this was an Azure or a Common Blue. I was pretty sure it was the latter but I’d heard no reports of any yet this season. A quick look in Dijkstra/Lewington back at home base confirmed my suspicions, it was indeed a female Common Blue Damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum), newly emerged. I’ve included the second contre-jour shot because you appear to be able to see clear through the backlit abdomen and what appears to be the empty gut inside. Curious picture.

Further along the track we did disturb about five Large Reds but none of them settled appropriately for the camera. More cooperative, particularly with each other, was a pair of 7-spot Ladybirds (Coccinella septempunctata) who seemed to be concentrating on making more ladybirds. Further along but having a little less fun by itself, though sporting the same number of spots as the previous couple, was a 14-spot Ladybird (Propylea quatuordecimpunctata).

One other critter worthy of note was this Nursery Web Spider (Pisaura mirabilis), mainly because it had obviously read its species description in Chinery:

Hunts in nettle beds and other dense vegetation. Sunbathes on leaves with front two legs on each side extending forward and very close together.

We did see another Common Blue female, so I think the weather had brought, or was bringing, them out. They’re going to be in for a bit of a shock before the weekend gets here, though, if the forecast is accurate (and when it’s bad, it usually is accurate).

I’m beginning to despair of the BBC; my guardians of proper English are relaxing their standards. Yesterday I spotted a headline proclaiming, “April [2012] is the wettest month for 100 years”. The very first paragraph began, “It has been the wettest April in the UK for over 100 years”. OK, so which is it, the wettest month or the wettest April? Precision guys, precision!

Be that as it may, whereas last spring was a stonker, this spring thus far has most certainly been absolute rubbish as regards the weather. In 2011 I spotted my first dragonfly of that new season on 19th April at Duck End NR, Malden. Consequently, for the last couple of weeks since returning home from Spain, I’ve been making trips to Duck End in search of this year’s first arrivals. My first two trips produced nothing – well, a couple of Speckled Wood (Pararge aegeria) butterflies flitting about wondering where the sun was.

Eventually I received an email from the Bedfordshire dragonfly recorder saying that Bedfordshire’s first 2012 record had been submitted on 21st April somewhere near Biggleswade. Then a follow up noted that three tenerals (recently emerged specimens) had been seen on Tuesday 24th at good ol’ Duck End NR. He also noted that 2012 had been the worst start, in terms of numbers of species spotted, that he had witnessed. I’m not surprised; if I were a dragonfly larva climbing a stem bent on emergence but came up against this April’s weather, I’d clamber straight back down under water again.

However, today being a very rare bright day, I made my third trip to Duck End (having first drawn a complete blank at both King’s Wood and Sandhouse Lane NR). It didn’t look terribly promising at first but eventually, beside one pond (there are four), a glint of wings fluttered up from the grass and settled not too far away. The little beauty, it was a recently emerged female Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). I kept disturbing the grass and a few more fluttered up and off to various safer locations. Eventually a new male settled on a very accessible bramble leaf a short distance from the pond to complete my pair. I saw 10 in all, I had broken my duck.

The Speckled Woods (I spotted five) looked a lot happier in the rare spell of sunshine and a few territorial spats went on. A little more interesting, though, merely because they are generally more difficult to capture, was my first Orange Tip (Anthocaris cardomines) of the season which settled to bask, albeit at some distance beyond assault-proof brambles. I was trying a new tactic of having my long lens mounted on my Canon EOS 7D body and my macro lens on my trusty and recently professionally cleaned 40D. One of them is also on my monopod. This armoury constitutes a bit of an armful but somehow I managed to juggle everything and bring the long lens to bear on said Orange Tip.

Back at home the sun had brought our ivy into life with a domestic collection of basking insects also longing for better weather. Here I manage to snag decent macro shots of the so-called Marmalade Fly (Episyrphus balteatus) and a Green Shield Bug (Palomena prasina). Green Shield Bugs are interesting in that they are brown in winter, turning green for summer. This one looks as though it’s in transition.

Finally, this little fellow (I think it’s a male now, judging by the length of its antennae) turned up. I had no idea even what kind of critter it was at first but it looked cute in a very hairy kind of way. It turns out to be a Solitary Bee of the Osmia genus. As is frequently the case, Chinery says there are many similar species so we have to be satisfied with genus level id. Typical!

I’d say I was a happy camper but regrettably today was a very small island of sunshine in an expansive sea of crap.

After four nights in La Brenne, we made a longish run south to Millau to go “ooh, ah” at its justly famous viaduct. Whenever I look at it I can’t help but think, “how on earth did they build that” which is silly because I’ve seen a TV programme about its being built. Quite simply stunning! We spent another four nights of mildly indifferent weather, though not at all bad, and watched the local wildlife which consisted almost entirely of birds. We were camped beside the river Dourbie which provided Dippers (Cinclus cinclus), Grey Wagtails (Motacilla cinerea) and the vivid blue flash of a Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) while overhead the enormous shapes of the very successfully re-introduced Griffon Vultures (Gyps fulvus) soared.

Then it was time to head for what I’d been thinking of as the main event, Les Alpilles. Les Alpilles are an attractive set of modest hills just north-east of the Camargue (the Rhone delta) and directly north of an area called La Plaine de la Crau. Here, reputedly, were a few quite well known (to naturalists) Odonata spotting spots. We’d stayed here a couple of years previously when I was beginning to develop my interest in dragonflies but, alas, I didn’t know we were near one of the Meccas for Odo-watching. Wildlife holidays are run to this place. Since our previously used campsite had decided to close early, we stayed at Camping Municipal des Romarins in Maussane-les-Alpilles. Some pitches are a little tight and it is a little urban for our usual tastes but quite adequate and conveniently located. The “free” (inclusive?) wi-fi made up for any shortcomings, too.

We began with the initially unassuming Canal de la Vallée des Baux. The habitat looked promising with quite a bit of floating greenery and plant-lined banks. The only slight downside was that access to the water’s edge wasn’t good. There is a footpath running along the north side of the canal but it was quite high with respect to the water and the banks were mostly overgrown and steep. Nonetheless, it proved a good little hunting ground. Enter new species #4: Spotted Darters (Sympetrum depressiusculum) which are entrants in the “dragonfly with the most difficult to pronounce scientific species name” award. Nice of them to have both sexes present, too – the red one is the male and the yellow, the female. As usual, I didn’t know what I was snapping away at until I studied the pictures back at base camp.

I snapped away at pretty much everything I saw, just to enable the compiling of a reasonably comprehensive list, and it’s a good job I did. There were some “Featherlegs” damselflies (Platycnemis) around and I was initially guilty of assuming that they were my usual White-legged Damselflies/Blue Featherlegs (P. pennipes). I deleted several shots back at Billy ‘cos I’ve got loads already. I had been very much mistaken. These were new species #5: White Featherlegs (Platycnemis latipes). Fortunately I managed to snag a very obliging couple in-cop after I had realized my grievous mistake.

Probably the main wildlife attraction in the area is the Peau de Meau or Coussouls de Meau. To visit this, you should first call in to the Ecomussee de la Crau in the nearby town of St-Martin-de-Crau and purchase a permit for a mere €3 (at the time of writing). Keep it all legal and support such wildlife habitat protection. We did so and set off to discover what all the fuss was about.

As one of Europe’s premier Odonata sites, I don’t know what I was really expecting but, whatever it was, this wasn’t it. I honestly thought we had come to the wrong place but would my Navigation Officer let me down? No, of course not. The place looks more like a desert than anything else, very flat and very stony. It’s basically a flood plain and the Coussouls name has something to do with it’s being used for grazing sheep. A very stiff breeze was blowing. We did begin to see a few darter dragonflies on the flat, stony plain but they were trouble flying. In fact, they were having trouble holding on to any perches.

We soon realized that the main attraction when it comes to Odos is a quite fat stream that flows past the main entrance, such as it is. In places, this stream is afforded some shelter from the wind by a hedgerow. The first characters we saw here were stunningly beautiful, utterly drop-dead gorgeous Copper Demoiselles (Calopteryx haemorrhoidalis), new species #5 and one that must be a contender in the “most difficult scientific name to spell” competition. Fortunately, I was wearing my specialist Salomon Aqua-tech shoes and could wade about in the stream trying to get better shots of them. With the metallic purple sheen of the males, these creatures are so captivating, it really was difficult to drag myself away to investigate further afield.

It’s a bit difficult writing what was supposed to be a travel blog when you can’t do it “live” due to insurance risks. It has to be done after the fact. Isn’t modern life a wonderful thing? Together with this little modern difficulty, the company that acted as registrar for my domain name has ceased trading, I can see a few changes coming this winter. Well, it gives me something constructive to do on dull days and evenings. Anyway, here’s the beginnings of a retrospective look at our second, largely Odo-chasing French trip of the year.

After our first trip and having hidden at home while Satan’s Little Disciples were abroad, our second trip ran from August 28th to October 9th, and what a trip it was! This was the kind of trip I live for and one of the absolute classics IMHO. Firstly, the weather was terrific; we had almost five weeks of glorious sunny weather, mostly unbroken. Secondly,  the sites we tried worked out well, our friends Mike and Linda travelled down to southern France to give us a break from each other’s company for a week. To cap it off, just when we thought Odo-chasing was largely at an end – we were wrong, by the way – we rounded off with a stunningly blue six days in the magnificent picturesque Pyrenees. We love the mountains but you really do need good weather for our kind of entertainment and, given the unpredictability of mountain weather, planning ahead is rarely a good idea. You have to react when the conditions present thamselves and react we did.

A couple of our sites were chosen deliberately with Odo-chasing in mind and they did not disappoint. We began in La Brenne staying at the Étang de Bellebouche. La Brenne claims to have 2,000 lakes, mostly small. The lakes resulted from mediæval fish farming but now make a great habitat for birds, particularly water fowl, and dragonflies. Whilst the area seems to be quite well known to wildlife enthusiasts, it is otherwise not generally on the main tourist trail, I think. Shunning crowds, that suits us perfectly. Odo-wise, our good fortune began on day one when we spotted quite a few Southern Darters (Sympetrum meridionale) on patches of heather. I’d seen female Southern Darters before, typically infested with little red mites, but never a male so I called this half a new species.

A day or so later we were snapping away at some Emerald Damselflies and only later, back at base with a computer screen, did I suspect that these were something new to us. We actually spotted them first at another étang, the Étang de Cistude, but they were also around a smaller fishing lake at our home base, in Bellebouche. Sure enough, they were noticeably smaller than the usual suspects though, staring through a camera’s viewfinder, size is rarely obvious. These delightful metallic green and bronze creatures were Small Emerald Damselflies (Lestes virens ssp vestalis). This one is a female. New species #2.

On the same day we nabbed a another character that initially appeared to be female, given its brown colouration. Close inspection, though, revealed what appeared to be very much male appendages. Skimming through the book produced but one candidate; this was quite clearly a Winter Damselfly (Sympecma Fusca) My third new catalogue entry.

What a great four days at La Brenne; generally decent weather and three new additions to the catalogue. I was already a happy camper.

The weather forecast spoke of sunny spells breaking out on Sunday and, as one of the things on my “to do” list this Odonata season was “visit Wicken Fen”, down came the Mazda’s roof and off we sped.

The cloud looked pretty solid as we tried out the new Sally-Satnav-confusing road to Bedford (she thinks you’ve gone off piste into Farmer Giles’ turnip field, so we left her turned off). We continued on to Cambridge and so did the cloud, which continued to look pretty solid. At Cambridge we woke Sally up and let her talk us down through the continuing solid cloud cover to an instrument landing at our destination car park between the village of Wicken and the National Nature Reserve itself.

Wicken Fen NNR is run by the National Trust, as is the car park. Carol is a member of the National Trust which would have waived the £2 parking fee, except that her parking sticker was in our other car. Whoops, didn’t think of that! Actually, since there was to be a £5.99 admission fee to the reserve for me, a non-member, I was rather surprised that there was also a car park charge at all. No matter, a few dragonflies are worth a couple of quid –well, £7.99 in all.

The unbroken cloud followed us into the reserve where, as usual on admission to NT properties, I had to fend off the chance to save my £5.99 admission if I joined the NT for ~£40 annually. “No thanks, I find rich folks’ big houses uninteresting and, besides, they make me jealous”.

I can see why I relate to dragonflies so much. Dragonflies and I share a similar definition of good weather. Unlike most Brits, who describe weather as “oh, isn’t it nice?” if it simply isn’t raining, I reserve such descriptions for days when the sun puts in an appearance. Thus far it hadn’t and neither had the dragonflies. Wicken Fen is supposedly one of the prime spots for dragon hunters in the UK and, having wandered half way around Sedge Fen, we’d spotted but one shy Ruddy Darter (Sympetrum sanguineum). We did then find a small water channel with a little more activity – a Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis) was ovipositing and a Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta) was flying up and down over a Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans) enjoying lunch but it wasn’t what you’d call humming with activity.

We could see what appeared to be a large, approaching sunny spell in the south-western distance so we decided to take a leaf of the little damselfly’s book and repair to lunch in the hope that the blue sky would get to us.

I had noticed that Wicken Fen has a population of the curiously named Variable Damselflies (Coenagrion pulchellum). They don’t look particularly exciting, once again being “just another blue dam”, but they are different and less than widespread. We are also getting perilously close to the end of their flight season but I was hoping to see my first.

Eventually, about another hour after lunch, the sunny spell did stagger its way to Wicken and the sun came out. So did the dragons. No sooner had the sun appeared than we started seeing tandem pairs mating and masses of Brown Hawkers ovipositing. Ever the opportunists.

We began another circuit of Sedge Fen and hawk-eyes spotted a blue damselfly on a lily pad. ”I think it’s an Azure”, she said studying it. Variable Damselflies do most closely resemble Azure Damselflies, having a similar U-shaped pattern on S2 but they generally also have distinctive antehumeral stripes that are broken, almost like exclamation marks. One of these shots shows that to very good effect. I snapped away becoming more convinced that this was my heart’s desire – well, today’s, anyway. I couldn’t believe our luck. We saw but one “blue dam” (actually, I think were two individuals with slightly different markings) and it was just what I wanted. Well done hawk-eyes and thank you blue dam.

New species for the catalogue. Now that’s got to be worth £7.99 – plus lunch!

What would a retired couple, a retired couple with a dislike of the noise emanating from children, I might add, be doing visiting the otherwise delightful New Forest in the middle of August, I hear you say? Very good question!

The answer is relatively simple. It is a sad fact that Satan’s Little Disciples are let out of their sanity-preserving prisons at a time that not only hijacks a fair proportion of our potential summer but also holds hostage a good chunk of our dragonfly season. Any Odonata  enthusiast wishing to maximize the season, which may be thought of as relatively brief at these northern latitudes, needs to get out there and mix it with the kids. Carol seems about as enthusiastic about dragonflies as I am these days so we had decided to face our nemesis and take a break in the middle of August.

I am delighted to report that we survived our novel experience relatively unscathed; we committed neither infanticide (most families seemed to have 3+ yapping Disciples), canicide (many families also seem to have yapping dogs in tow) or suicide (which, although still illegal, would probably have been our most honourable escape option).

I actually had a specific goal in mind from this trip. Though relatively widespread, the Black Darter (Sympetrum danae) does not live in our neck of the woods. There are, however, necks of the New Forest where it does live. I was very keen to see an example or two so I made a note of couple of interesting locations from Doug Overton’s New Forest Dragonflies website.

There is a particularly revered “flush” in the New Forest at a place called Crockford Stream which we’d visited on a previous trip. I now noticed that I’d probably missed something of a rarity, the Southern Damselfly (Coenagrion mercuriale). Looking like “just another blue damselfly”, it’s easy for the novice to overlook. One of our first stops was to try and correct my oversight and we returned. Luck and Carol’s hawk-like eyes were with us – just about the first individual she spotted hunkering down out of the wind was our intended quarry, a Southern Damselfly, and here it is. The differentiation is the shape of the marking on the dorsal side of S2 of the male which is said to resemble Mercury’s winged helmet. [Ed: Hmm, what were they smoking?]

At many sites, much of the activity seemed to centre around Keeled Skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens). We’d nabbed the males on our earlier trip but, unlike the males which strut their stuff over a territory, the females are more elusive, typically lurking about low in the grass. I eventually happened to scare one up and track it to get my first shot, although she is partially obscured by the obligatory blade of grass. Nonetheless, she’s a welcome addition to our catalogue.

Eventually we went off in search of my main quarry, the Black Darters. Two of Doug’s sites, which happened to be very close together, looked favourite. The first pond didn’t look hopeful at first but, either as we got our eye in or as it warmed up a little, we spotted what could only have been a Black Darter male flying sorties from a Cross-leaved Heath (so says Carol – Erica tetralix) plant which provided a suitably colourful counterpoint to the male’s dark elegance. As is usual with a new species, I was captivated and had trouble dragging myself away. Happy camper! We did drag ourselves away, though and went on to the second location where there were many more Black Darter males and where we luckily (once again) stumbled across the female of the species lurking in the pond’s surrounding plant life. Very happy camper!

Finally, Carol did very well with an old friend: on manual focus, she managed to snag this excellent shot of a Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum) in flight beside another of our ponds from a previous trip. Common Darters are really very attractive and can be easily overlooked. If you can get pictures like this, what a mistake that would be.

I am a traditionalist. This may seem a little strange for someone who spent their entire career in technology but it’s certainly true. I suspect it stems from my father who was a craftsman, a joiner in fact, with a very traditional, manual approach. I like to do some things the old way. As a result, I stuck with real film cameras until just two years ago when, spurred on by others and by the time required to digitize film through a scanner, I finally jumped into the digital SLR market with a Canon EOS 40D. I’m very glad I did ‘cos I couldn’t take half the wildlife pictures I now take using slow old Fuji Velvia slide film, beautiful though it was. This hovering Emperor Dragonfly (Anax imperator), for example, is not practical at ISO 50. It was actually shot at ISO 800, f8 at 1/1000th sec.

Whilst still in film mode, I fell in love with images obtained (by professionals, I hasten to add) using a stonkingly beautiful medium format panoramic landscape camera called the Fuji GX617. This beast produces images that measure 6×17 cm images on a 120/220 roll film, be that negative or positives (as in slide film). A 120 film takes only 4 images, 220 manages 8 Unfortunately, as well as being unwieldy, the camera and its associated lenses cost about £10K so I just drooled and admired pictures from the likes of David Noton.

Enter: the flexibility of digital processing at home.

We’ve just returned from a trip around France where I found a couple of landscape views that seemed to be crying out for the 6×17 format so I deliberately shot them with the intention of cropping them down chez moi. BTW, I’ve sized the main images linked to these thumbnails, at 1000 pixels wide so they should fit on a typical 1024-pixel screen.

The first image I couldn’t resist was of this man wading back, apparently out of the sea, to his tractor. I love the sense of isolation and confusion, though maybe the latter is just me. “What’s going on here, then?” Actually, just off shot to the left are his mates in a small fishing boat waiting to be recovered by him and the tractor. He’s actually walking up a flooded concrete ramp.

Rather more obvious is this very traditional (other than the 6×17 format) touristy shot of Rocamadour. Without this format it is difficult to show both Rocamadour on one side of the valley and the opposing cliffs without too much sky at the top and/or green fields at the bottom.

Farming provided my next opportunity and is really the land-based equivalent to the fisherman shot above. Our favourite dairy sheep farm at Fanjeaux is in very picturesque countryside but the width of this view would again give far too much sky and/or cornfield on a traditional 35mm (3×2) format. On the far left horizon is the church tower of Fanjeaux itself whilst on the right is our host’s neighbouring farm. The harvester  is sandwiched nicely between the two.

The same dairy sheep farm has a lake for irrigation purposes and the lake supports a healthy population of Odonata. Damselflies tend to indulge in massed ovipositing, large groups of pairs all trying to lay eggs at once to ensure the continuation of the species. The groups are often too deep to get everything in focus but on this occasion the group was relatively wide but shallow. This also seems to work in good ol’ 6×17 format. Most, if not all of these are Small Red-eyed Damselflies (Erythromma viridulum).

I do most of my cropping in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional these days ‘cos I shoot RAW and who should understand Canon RAW better than Canon? Of course, to make a decent print of such pictures would require an A3 printer and probably a few more pixels than my EOS 40D. I’ll just have to wait until the new kit turns up.

Two years ago, Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies – I’ll use the term dragonflies collectively) began distracting me a little from my long-standing love, butterflies. Last year I became very keen on dragonflies and started searching them out when we went travelling. This year I was waiting with bated breath for the start of the season after what seemed like a very long winter. As soon as the dragonflies were out, so was I, looking for them.

As a relative newbie to dragonflies, I now realize that the start of a particular species’ flight season (they vary quite markedly) really is the best time to snap it. Firstly, a freshly emerged dragonfly (teneral) is more likely to be in pristine condition and secondly, you get to see the sometimes stark colour variation between an immature and a mature adult. This is particularly marked in the two examples here. Both these photographs are of very clean male Broad-bodied Chasers (Libellula depressa), though they don’t seem to resemble each other that much. As the adult male matures, it develops a blue pruinescence which covers the body. On the far left is an immature male from our recent trip to Suffolk. On the near left is a very neat mature male from Ledburn Pit yesterday.

Being in a well known sand-producing area, we are pretty much surrounded by various quarries/pits that are no longer worked. Nature, with the help of a little management, has been allowed to take over, and very welcome it is, too. There is even a former tar-macadam plant from the days of building the M1 motorway. The plant was razed and that site is also being reclaimed by nature. What is essentially industrial wasteland may not, at first, seem like a likely hunting ground for perfection in nature but first impressions are wrong. It certainly beats tidy parkland where, though wildlife is normally there to be seen, the nature enthusiast is required to contend with people walking dogs (and normally failing either to control them or to clean up behind them), fishermen (generally leaving their beer cans behind) and swarms of Satan’s Little Disciples scaring things away.

My mature male Broad-bodied Chaser wasn’t my only success at Ledburn Pit yesterday. We (I’d bumped into Rory Morrisey again) started off with a relatively new Red-eyed Damselfy (Erythromma najas) and Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans), both flitting about a bed of nettles and both of which eventually cooperated with our cameras. The Red-eyed Damselfly (near right) doesn’t yet have the intensity of colour in its eyes that would be expected in an older specimen.

We soon met a third member of our clan (Bob Henry) and so an enthusiasm of naturalists was once again formed. It was Bob who led us to a small pool where at least three male Broad-bodied Chasers seemed to be harrying a lone female. Nothing changes!

I hit gold in the old pit soon thereafter. Four-spotted Chasers (Libellula quadrimaculata) – I just love that scientific name – are common enough but so far I’d seen one only and that was at a distance too great for a good quality image (it was at Sandhouse Lane NR last year). I was keen to do better so we started circling the main flooded pit. Sure enough, as if it had read the script, a very fresh-looking (it’s wings still glistened) specimen of a Four-spotted Chaser flew up in front of us and came to rest in the grass stems 4m away. We had to work hard to get a shot that wasn’t obscured by flapping grass stems but fortunately our quarry cooperated by staying put and we managed it. Is this not a magnificent creature? I could not really have asked for much better – well, a cleaner background, maybe.

As if all this weren’t enough, a Hairy Dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) was patrolling restlessly, low down along the bank. It didn’t seem keen on stopping or hovering, unfortunately, but it was my best view of one to date (new to me this year). Then a female gave me the best chance I’d get by beginning to oviposit along the same bank.  She seemed intent on moving on rather faster than my reactions would allow or lens would focus. I did get a shot but it’s a bad one. I include it just because it’s my first ever Hairy Dragonfly shot. Still, you need a quest to keep you going.

Industrial Wasteland is great – just us and the critters.

This is turning into something of a Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve blog at the moment. Being a relatively new member of the Odonata fan club, this is the first year when I’ve been eagerly awaiting the start of the new season. It’s also, therefore, my first chance at logging the season – noting which species emerge when for a particular site. At least it gives me something interesting to do while we’re waiting for the boat to France, though the French trip will inevitably cause a hiatus in my local observations.

Yesterday brightened up very nicely in the afternoon so I popped in for another couple of hours. I’ve been noticing what I think of as a slightly odd feature regarding Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). We’ve been fortunate enough to observe decent populations (~10) at each of three sites recently. The first was at Duck End NR, where we saw about a dozen relatively recently emerged individuals – our first of the season. I returned two days later and saw next to nothing. Similarly, a couple of days ago we spotted ~10 Large Red, including two pairs “in cop” (mating), at Sandhouse Lane NR. Yesterday, once again, there was next to no activity at the main dragonfly pond. I did spot a few individuals lurking about in trees at some distance from the water, though. I’m wondering if this species in particular pulls something of a disappearing act shortly after emergence.

I continued wandering, getting just a little bit down, wondering where all my mates had disappeared to. Then I saw a telltale glint of sunlit wings that promptly settled in a Hawthorn bush. I approached as carefully and was stunned to see a brilliant green metallic body shining in the sun. I didn’t really know what I was looking at but, having been trawling various books on the subject, the phrase “Downy Emerald” sprang to mind. It was certainly unlike anything I’d personally seen before. Suddenly the day changed and became excellent. I needn’t have worried about stealth – this character  seemed content to sit for about an hour while I snapped away adjusting various settings, desperate to get at least one decent shot. I did.

I was so captivated I had difficulty dragging myself away from her perch. ‘T was a good job I did, though, because a Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) decided to sunbathe very cooperatively in front of me on some waste ground. The only dragonfly I spotted in this area, on old tarmac plant, was a teneral damselfly which I’m still trying to identify [but suspect it is a female Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella)]‘.

Once back at home, I confirmed that my new best friend was, indeed, a female Downy Emerald (Cordulia aenea). She’s not a perfect specimen, unfortunately – she has a blemish on the lower right abdomen and her right hind-wing also is blemished and seems a little malformed. That wasn’t going to dampen my delight at another first, though.

Downy Emeralds are relatively scarce in our neck of the woods so I felt very privileged.

[Egg-citing Easter was a bit too obvious, even for me, but I thought I should note the possibility.]

First of all, my dear ol’ mum bought me a lovely Thornton’s dark chocolate Easter Egg. How much of a big kid can you get? To reciprocate, we thought we’d drag her off to a magnificent bluebell wood so she could mutter things like “ooh” and “ahh”. Spring has been such that everything is happening earlier than normal this year. Bluebells burst out about two weeks ahead of their usual schedule and the wood up near Ashridge is one of the more spectacular displays available and attracts hoards from miles around. You have to be patient and/or work hard to get shots sans bright red shirts and tripods spoiling the view but it can be done – just. The scent was fabulous, too, but I can’t embed that with this technology.

The critters that we love are also generally ahead of schedule and are wasting no time doing what comes naturally, making babies while the sun shines. We began on Easter Sunday by visiting the Chiltern Hills on another flower hunt, this time in search of early orchids. It was really Carol in search of orchids ‘cos I’m really only fascinated by things with a heartbeat – well, a pulsating abdomen, more accurately – but it was a great excuse for a trip out with the roof down in this utterly unbelievable run of spring weather. We thought that the orchids might also have been substantially advanced but not advanced enough, it seems. Carol spotted a few telltale spotted leaves of early purple orchids but no actual flower spikes.

I’d lagged behind photographing a Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus) in the act, I think, of ovipositing several future Holy Blues and, as I caught up with her (Carol, that is, not the female Holly Blue), she asked, “do you know a butterfly which is bright green and navy blue?”. Thinks: the only green I can think of is the Green Hairstreak but I don’t think it has any blue on it. “No, not really. Green Hairstreaks are green but …”.

Carol had scared up an elusive green beast which had fluttered off into the undergrowth. Naturally, it’s very difficult to spot a green beast in green undergrowth but, well, I’m getting used to hawk-eyes Carol seeing such things. Sure enough, she found it again. The beast in question was, indeed, a Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi). I think you’ll see the magnitude of the challenge from this picture. I have been fascinated with butterflies for 50 years, since Brooke Bond issued a collection of butterfly cards in their PG Tips tea packets. I’d drink tea just to make mother buy another packet so I could collect more cards. In 50 years of interest, however, I’d never before seen a Hairstreak of any description, green or otherwise. With camouflage this good, is it any wonder I hadn’t spotted one? This was a very special day for me. It certainly made up for the lack of orchids.

On our way back to the car, carol snagged this shot of the rather unkindly named Dingy Skipper (Erynnis targes). Two had been spiralling about in a territorial tussle and Carol picked the one that was in better condition. I, on the other hand … well, enough said.

On Easter Monday we turned our attention to our local patch, Sandhouse Lane NR, mainly to see how the Odonata activity was getting on. I’ve recently joined the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and have started submitting records of Dragonflies and Damselflies using their online recording system. They are particularly interested this year in Large Red Damselflies, the first ones to emerge in the spring, so I was keen to contribute what I could to their survey. Damned if we didn’t see three more Green Hairstreaks there en route to the likely dragonfly hangout. The light on this shot casts some very nice textural shadows so I’m forcing this second shot upon you. 50 years of famine and suddenly my world is full of Green Hairstreaks. Weird.

Finally we did make it to the dragonfly hangouts where the world was also suddenly full of copulating Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). We saw them at a couple of locations in Sandhouse Lane but this tandem pair is, I think, the best and most interesting shot of the bunch – and I do mean bunch – because it helps distinguish the markings of the male (in front) versus female (at the back). We spotted a lone example of a second species, too, a Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ishnura elegans), though it wasn’t co-operative enough to pose well. Maybe next time.

The season is hotting up.