Shades On

Warning this post contains sexually explicit material

(That should get the number of hits up)

As you will have gathered from my previous posts, I am very much a beginner when it comes to dragonflies, but as the local birdlife is pretty quiet at this time of year, I have thrown my lot in with the dubious crowd that (seriously) study these wee beasties, in an attempt to broaden my horizons.

Having purchased the bible – Field Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Steve Brook (illustrations by Richard Lewington) – I started the process of (mentally) ticking the species I see and recognise and where possible try to get a half decent photograph for future reference, personal gratification and most importantly to try and wind up my expert odo spotting mates at FoHESC.  Unfortunately the latter usually backfires when I proudly display my picture, but have to follow it up with, "I like this picture - but what is it?"

At first it seemed to be going well, Hairy dragonfly – tick, Four-spotted chaser – tick, Emperor – tick, a piece of cake this dragonfly business, then the wheels started to fall off. Clearly the dragonflies had not read the book, had failed to properly adhere to the designated colour scheme or were in fact colour-blind.

 Four-spotted Chaser, very numerous at the moment and real posers

Males and females have different livery, OK, we can cope with that, although it doesn’t help that males often start off pretty darn similar in colour to the ladies. Then a la David Bowie, the boys undergo a number changes in persona, before arriving at the finished article (I assume David is now the finished article). Let me try and demonstrate my confusion, with a few pictures of Ruddy Darters (No, I’m not being disparaging – that’s what Sympetrum sanguineum are called).

The first picture is of a female (I think) but when immature the male looks very similar indeed.

This picture shows the beginning of the colour change in a male but according to the guide he is not yet mature.

Whoa! – immature my foot, big boy’s come of age and doing his funky stuff with Mrs Ruddy D in what I understand is the tandem position (please don’t try this at home).

The pair remained coupled and flew in tandem over the pond surface whilst the female dipped her ovipositor into the water at frequent intervals to lay her eggs, these should hatch into larvae in a few days and emerge as dragonfly in about a year.

Returning to the same spot a couple of hours later I found that the gent was really living up to his name and had become a bright red. Of course I cannot be certain that it was the same dragonfly, although in view of the small numbers of Ruddy Darters in that area I think it may have been. The weather was very warm and sunny – maybe that hastens the colour change – or does the act of mating kick off the change? Hopefully someone will enlighten me.

Male Ruddy Darter (Sympetrum sanguineum) in full colour

It was nice also to observe that I was not the only one looking for flies that afternoon. This Reed Warbler seems to have amassed a pretty impressive collection, which I assume were en route to junior.

If you enjoy any of my photographs or would like to see more, please click on the link to my flickr site at the top right of this page.

Murder from the Oriental Empress

Sorry this is going to be a fairly quick post this week as most of my creative juices over the last week or so seem to have been pumped into the FoHESC Blog, and the Save St Peters campaign. Not just creatively dry, but physically drained too, having shed blood sweat and tears on a number of far too physical projects down at the Hanson Centre (in some particularly sultry weather) whilst being transfusion vamped by the rampaging mosquitoes.

I do however have at least one interesting encounter with the pond side battle for survival to recount and hopefully also, a couple of snaps for the ToaBV faithful to enjoy.

On Sunday morning the weather was quite pleasant – sunny if not overly warm – and so I stationed myself near to a pond which had contained quite a few dragonflies the week before, in the hope of a good photo opportunity. If you have seen the FoHESCBlog you may remember the photo of the female Emperor Dragonfly ovipositing, whilst a Four-spotted Chaser hovered nearby, apparently curious, although I’m sure there was a more basic reason involved (food or sex usually covers it).

Anyway the lady in question was definitely for turning and turning ugly at that, as a whirling mass of odonata rattled past my head and alighted in the nearby grass. At first I thought they were mating, but the tiny but unmistakable sound of crunching combined with Mrs Emps jaw grip on the poor unfortunate 4-spots thorax (the head had been bitten off and can be seen on her lower wing) confirmed that dinner was served. Because there was quite a lot of grass around them, it was difficult to get a good, clear, picture but I hope these give a reasonable idea of the scene.

She's only gone an bitten is ead orf

Love Bite?

(At least vampires leave the heads on while they suck the goodness out)

Finally Mrs E got fed up with the paparazzi intruding on her lunch date and with the now diminishing 4-SC firmly clamped in her jaws, relocated beyond my reach. Back on the path however, was a male Black-tailed skimmer – the first I have seen so far this year in the masculine blue livery and very nice too.

Black-tailed skimmer

The knees were now starting to give out with standing for too long in one place, so I walked on round the reserve and was rewarded with these pictures of the Pyramidal Orchid (now a little further in bloom)

The flowers have opened out further since my last picture (see FoHESC Blog)

a Marbled White Butterfly

and A Large Skipper Butterfly.

My what a long proboscis you have

We seem to have Small and Large Skippers on the reserve at the moment (although I have to confess that I am not experienced enough to be totally confident of the differences - I did also think we had Essex Skippers but have since been corrected).

Finally, and with a bit of luck, the Common Terns might hoover up a few of the mosquitoes along with the flies they are catching over the water.

A good morning for all (well apart for one).

再見 for now.