Kent odonata.

I was house/ cat sitting in Kent for my son recently and had a Dragonfly and a Damselfly on my must see list. The Beautiful Demoiselle was found thanks to local birder Warren on his patch at Pittswood.

BEAUTIFUL DEMOISELLE male

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By way of thanks i invited him to join me at Westbere Lakes the following day and we both got a lifer in the form of the Scarce Chaser Dragonfly. I picked up on an imm female in vegetation by one of the ditches then we both had a mature male perched on the edge of the Great Stour river which runs next to the lakes.

SCARCE CHASER  immature female.

SCARCE CHASER mature male.

My bonus was finding a Red-eyed Damselfly while i was at Dungeness RSPB. It was a bright but very breezy day and all the Damsels were hunkered down on the leeward side of any vegetation around the gravel pit pools. A female Hairy Dragonfly was also a nice suprise elsewhere on the site.

RED-EYED DAMSELFLY immature male with two BLUE-TAILED DAMSELS

HAIRY DRAGONFLY female

The demise of the Cresswell Pond Avocet nests and a Spoonbill.

I returned to Cresswell Pond for the first time in over a fortnight early on Tuesday morning and was saddened to see that all the Avocet nests had been predated and not even the adults were around. I e mailed the trust a few weeks ago to let them know that the first bird was on the first nest here but apart from an automated reply to say they had received the e mail i heard nothing more from them. I watched over the following weeks as more and more birds were deciding this was the place for them to start their new families. The main reason i had contacted the trust was the fact that the nests would be so open to predation whether it be from animals or even humans as access to the sand bar was easy enough from in front of the hide. I bumped into a couple of trust workers putting up a compound on the beach at Chevington Burn for what i thought would be the Ringed Plovers but was inform by one of the guys that it was in fact for Roseate Terns. Whatever it was for when i saw the Avocets at Cresswell i thought that something along similar lines might have been erected temporarily somehow to give the Avocets some sort of chance. Sadly, as it turned out they were left to get on with it and the sandbar is now missing these beautiful creatures. Hopefully the Wildlife Trust will turn their thinking away from Hauxley for a short while and consider a strategy that might give the Avocets a fighting chance of rearing young at Cresswell Pond next year. I'm sure a consultation with other reserves that have these birds breeding there would help them come up with something.
I did have my spirits raised somewhat when a stunning adult Spoonbill dropped onto the pond early on. It eventually made its way in front of the hide and thus allowed for a few images, a couple of which are here.

Early riser.

Spoonbill rising over Cresswell Pond early this morning before the sun broke through.

Is that a Hobby up there ?

Is that a Four-spot Chaser down there ?

Falco Subbuteo

With four others hawking over the Water Tower Pits, Dungeness, Kent.