Friday 16 October 2015

Last hurrah

Apologies first of all for the lack of postings recently. I've discovered Twitter and have to say i enjoy using it. It's instant and i can post thoughts or comments as i think of them and importantly before i've forgotten.
Last week the weather was superb and was a chance to go seek out a few dragonflies. It has been an awful year for odonata thanks to the indifferent weather. I found myself cancelling the few dragon outings i had planned and can only remember using the macro lens once in earnest. I visited Banks Pond near Dinnington on three occasions in seven days. The last visit was relatively quiet and although the sun was shining initially there was a chill in the air and when some light cloud drifted over the drop in temperature was noticeable. Despite the conditions and lack of numbers i did get my best dragon of the week. I espied a Hawker moving around the perimeter of the site and thankfully it dropped down into the vegetation at the north end. As i approached i could see it was a female and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a Common, a species i hadn't seen here before. On a later date i bumped into Peter Fletcher at Tynemouth and asked if he had seen any Common at Banks but said as far as he could recall he hadn't. A handful of Common Darters were perched on stones at the north end absorbing as much heat as possible. I found a single Black Darter and spotted two Migrant Hawkers eventually on the lookout for females on the larger pond. I was only there for just over an hour.

On the second of the three visits i was with THE Howdon Blogger and we had good numbers of Common Darters many of which were in tandem ovipositing. Hard to give exact numbers but possibly 20- 30 on the larger pond and 10-15 on the smaller. Great to watch as they danced about the water. A few Ruddy Darters were favouring the sphagnum moss around the perimeter while a half a dozen Black Darters  were in the spagnum and grasses close by.

 Three male Migrant Hawkers were patrolling the the reed beds, one of which came close as i sat by the smaller pond having a drink, its wings clattering the reed stems as it passed. John put me onto a pair of Migs in tandem flying but they were distant and heading off into the trees. I did however manage to capture a couple of in flight dragons.


5 comments:

  1. Good to see your enjoying some decent weather John, albeit a little late! Nice flight shots :-)

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    1. Nice to hear from you Warren. The brief spell we had was all a bit too late sadly but i wasn't going to say turn it down.
      Not commented on your blog recently as i got sick of saying how fabulous your images were. LOLOL. I felt i was sounding like a broken record ! Keep them coming !!

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  2. Nice selection of species on show John, the late season certainly saved the year for dragonhunting. Good find with the common hawker but was that not where you had the emerging one earlier in the year?

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    1. You're vaguely ringing a bell there somewhere Alan. I'm getting old an the old grey matter ain't functioning that well these days. Just had a look back thro' this years posts on here but i've a feeling i might have tweeted the image. Don't fancy going through that lot !
      It was nice to have some time with our jeweled insects even if we had to wait and it wasn't for long. A few i missed out on this year sadly.

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    2. Look on the July 11th post (Dragons) you had it down as a southern hawker but it's deffo a common just emerged.
      I missed out on loads meself, awful year for dragons with one thing and another.

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