Tag Archives: Odonata

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.

Madeira’s population is roughly 250,000 in round numbers. About 50% of these live in the capital, Funchal, with its buildings climbing up hills surrounding the harbour rather like the banked seats in an amphitheatre. Today was our last full day on Madeira and we were free to wander around and explore the town to our hearts’ content.

Target one was the market, which starts at 7:00 AM. Outside the hall we came across ladies selling flowers dressed in their traditional costumes o colourfully striped skirts and hats bearing contrasting side triangular shapes that looked to me like pixie ears. Cute! Such ladies, we were told, used to walk down the mountain side carrying their flowers to sell at the market, then walk back up the mountain side after their day at the office; distances of anything up to 10kms/7mls each way. That’d keep you fit.

The market hall itself, on two levels, were mainly the fruit and vegetable stalls with the buzz and bustle I’ve come to expect of non-UK European food markets. I hadn’t, however, come across anything approaching high-pressure fruit selling before but here, they were particularly keen on offering tasters of mangoes, passion fruits and the like followed by a pre-emptive close. We tasted – everything was excellent – but resisted signing a contract.

At the rear of the market hall was the fish market where we were able to come face to face with a Madeiran speciality, the black scabbard fish. Being essentially an old volcano in the Atlantic ocean, the land shelves away rapidly and the surrounding waters get very deep very quickly. The scabbard fish is a deep water fish that is, well, frankly bitch ugly; it’s very long and thin with a black skin, large eyes and fearsome looking teeth – most unappetizing in appearance. However, once prepared it makes damn good eating and is traditional served with another popular commodity on Madeira, bananas. Fried fish and bananas – yum! It sounds odd but it’s a curiously interesting combination – exactly what I jump at on a menu.

After the market, target two was one of Funchal’s two main gardens. Both require a climb and one way to achieve the climb is via a cable car which, though it struck us as a little on the expensive side, looked the most fun. Actually, there are two separate cable car runs linked by a short walk. The first takes you up to the higher of the two gardens, the tropical garden. The second brings you about half-way back down again to the lower botanical garden. To return, you have to reverse your journey and go back up before descending all the way back to sea level again. This seemed a slightly curious arrangement to me but I’m sure there was some logic to it somewhere. One of our party had already visited the tropical garden and pronounced it “very green” so Carol fancied the botanical garden instead. The combined ticket for both cable cars and entrance to the tropical garden was ~€28.00 each.

Our choice turned out to be a good one. Firstly, it most certainly wasn’t just green:

Secondly, while Carol was in her element and I was wandering around pretending to be interested in nature without a pulse, up popped a very unexpected visitor and landed beside me posing cooperatively for my first dragonfly encounter of 2012. It even waited long enough for me to purloin Carol’s proper camera. New species are always a thrill and, though this looked basically like a Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum), it was actually a related species, an Island Darter (Sympetrum nigrifemur). By itself, this would have made my day but then I spotted a new entry for the butterfly collection, too, a Macaronesian Red Admiral (Vanessa volcania). Big grins all round.

Our wildlife thrills were not yet over. Having retraced our cable car route back to sea level and whilst investigating Funchal itself, we spotted a few large butterflies flitting about the small but charming Municipal Garden in the middle of town. I knew that the Canary Islands and Madeira were two of the very few places in Europe that were home to populations of Monarch/Milkweed butterflies and, though I might have secretly held hopes that I’d see one, I really didn’t expect to. Here they were, another new species for the collection. They weren’t alone, either. A very small blue was flitting about the grass and, though we really needed our wildlife lenses, we did manage to catch it on pixels and identify it as Lang’s Short-tailed Blue. (A publishable view of the topside proved impossible to get.)

All in all, a pretty successful day.

Normally when we get to our blissful dairy sheep farm at Fanjeaux, we have trouble dragging ourselves away. Our normal pattern is to go through the motions of a debate between ourselves, whereupon we always decide to stay as long as possible making a last minute dash for the  northern coast and our ferry. [Note: dashing, with Billy in tow, is a relative pedestrian affair and requires two days minimum.]

This trip was different. We had already enjoyed a mix of new and old haunts with a mix of sight-seeing, Odo-spotting and socialising (meeting friends Mike and Linda Eaton) at Montagnac for a week. We’d already enjoyed four weeks of almost unbroken sunshine. Technically, Luc and Nadine close their campsite at the end of September though they are normally helpful enough to let us stay on a few extra days if we want. Our friends were all leaving, though; we were in danger of feeling like Billy No-mates, which did not appeal. Nor were there any dragonflies of any note with which to amuse ourselves. Furthermore, the weather forecast was excellent for the coming five days and we were looking longingly at clear blue skies over the Pyrenees. We love mountains – you can keep your beaches – but, all too often their weather is unsettled. Not wishing to miss a rare clear spell on the French side of the majestic Pyrenees, we happily packed up and headed for Bagnères-de-Bigorre.

When we come to the end of a spring trip to France, Channel 4’s excellent TV coverage of Le Tour de France softens the blow of being at home again – it lets us down gently. Helicopters fly TV cameras around some of the more intriguing sights in the countryside surrounding the stages and we can enjoy the feel of France again vicariously. Le Tour always, but always, visits both the Alps and the Pyrenees. Let’s face it, the French don’t think they are truly cycling unless they are pedalling up a painfully steep and seemingly never ending hill. At Bagnères-de-Bigorre we were within striking distance, in a car you understand, of three notable Tour de France cols. With this weather and this scenery, we had no trouble amusing ourselves.

On our way down from the col d’Aspin we happened across a very picturesque leisure area around the Lac de Payolle. That is, it would normally have been picturesque but this was a Sunday and the place was buried under dozens of camper vans. Furthermore, this Sunday was the French fêtes des grands-pères [grandfathers’ day] and the dozens of camper vans had been joined by dozens of picnicking families with grand-père in tow. Nonetheless, it was a large area and very agreeable.

Being the Lac de Payolle. in the large area was a decent sized lake – dammed, of course, as are most French lakes – clearly designed for leisure pursuits. However, at its top end the lake was fed by something resembling a flush. What Odo-nutter could resist a flush when the season was not quite over? Certainly not I. ‘T was a good job, too. Several hawkers were buzzing around including Southern Hawkers. However, there were others that I didn’t immediately recognize. After much stressful snapping, mostly on manual focus, I eventually snagged a shot of a male in flight. New species #8: a Common Hawker (Aeshna juncea). This may be a so-called Common Hawker but I’d never seen one before. I did snag a female ovipositing, too, but the flight shot is the only shot I got of the male, the darn things just would not settle. it comes to something when a shot in flight is “easier” than a stationary shot!

IMHO this was a classic trip, the weather was great, our stops worked out well, we enjoyed some good times in the company of friends and we got to see new dragonflies to add to our growing catalogue. 30 confirmed species overall, including eight new ones, I regard as a decent tally. I don’t want to see them all in one year – what would I do to amuse myself next year?

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!