Male Golden-Ringed Dragonfly, on GorseDowny Emerald Dragonfly over Moat Pond, Thursley CommonBlack-tailed skimmer in a bog poolLarge Red Damselflies in cop over a bog stream, a pleasant corner on a hot day. The female is immature, with brighter colours than older females of this species. The female Large Red Damselfly has a black line along the top of her abdomen. Keeled Skimmer – these little guys were whizzing about like crazy!
Also seen: one Emperor over the Moat Pond; Common Darters; Southern Hawker; Common Blue Damselfly.
Four-Spotted Chaser, on a fine lookout
There were few birds about, but they were good: the only pair of Curlews nesting in Hampshire, both seen, and both heard, flying from their nestplace over the bog, calling continuously (and evocatively) and landing separately; Dartford Warbler, a terrific view, the long tail cocked, and hopping about on a tuft of dry grass; Stonechat; Skylark; Buzzard. On the main lake, just Mallard, Coot, Tufted Duck; on the Moat Pond, Moorhen.
Water Gardens and foliage of many shapes and colours at Wakehurst PlaceA grassy dell on the side of the main valley, with Oaks and RhododendronsAzure Damselflies in cop, well seen from the handsome boardwalk at the far end of the gardens. The blue male has a U-shaped mark at the front of his abdomen; the green female has a thistle-shaped mark in the same place. Unlike the Common Blue damselfly, she does not have a spine sticking down out of the second-from-last ‘tail’ segment.
Emperor Dragonfly habitat: the beautiful main pond by the Wakehurst Place lawns. Yellow and White Waterlilies are in full bloom.
Well, I was hoping to see some colourful dragonflies on this hot and sunny day in early June, and they exceeded expectations. On the main pond just behind the Wakehurst Place mansion, the bulky shape of an Emperor Dragonfly, with its big apple-green thorax and downcurved blue abdomen, patrolled up and down over the Yellow and White Waterlilies, both gloriously in bloom. A single Broad-Bodied Chaser unmistakably whizzed low over the water.
The Water Gardens glittered in the sunshine, the little waterfalls tinkled pleasingly, and a few damselflies busied themselves among the vegetation.
Traditional Sussex Craftsmanship: Boardwalk, with green-oak posts and rails (cloven not sawn, making them elegant, rugged, and strong as the grain runs unbroken the whole length of each rail) at the water gardens.
Down at the reedbed, the broad and elegantly-fenced boardwalk with its traditional green-oak posts and rails let us get as close as possible to the dragonflies down there. A Large Red Damselfly perched for a moment beside my hand on the rail. Azure Damselflies skittered about, some in cop, some ovipositing. A solitary Banded Demoiselle male, unmistakable with his big indigo wing-patches, fluttered back and forth.
The other side of the boardwalk, a male dragonfly hovered over open water in the dazzling sunlight. I did my best to focus on the shimmering target. An Emerald! The Downy Emerald has been recorded here at Wakehurst Place, but this is also within the very narrow territory of the Brilliant Emerald in England, basically a bit of inland Sussex and Surrey, with another haunt in northwest Scotland. There is no sign of a downy thorax here, I don’t think; nor is the abdomen bronze-green, but rather a rich deep, iridescent, green; and it has the smooth spatulate outline of a Brilliant Emerald. Exciting!
Well this looks to me like a Brilliant Emerald Dragonfly! Sorry about the blurry photo – such things are never easy, but this one is rather interesting.
The meadows, too, were glorious in their early summer best, full of red clover, buttercups, and plenty of stalks of Common Spotted Orchid among the slender grass stems.
Spotted leaf of Common Spotted Orchid, in case you aren’t familiar with it!
Suddenly, after a freezing but dry April and a warmer but moist (April Showers) May, it’s June and Summer. The hazels have rushed into full leaf; the brambles are pushing across the paths at astonishing speed; Azure Damselflies have all hatched at once and are sunning themselves near the pond; and pairs of Large Red Damselflies are urgently flying about, all 8 wings in harmony, in their complex mating system, to lay eggs rapidly on pond plants before it all dries up. Like their much larger cousins, the Dragonflies, Damselflies are predators, and fiercely competitive for their territory; males chase off not only other males but other insects.
Four-Spotted Chaser, resting on HeatherSouthern Marsh-Orchid Dactylorhiza praetermissaPicture-Winged Fly on sandy pathLarge Red Damselfly on one of the splendid boardwalksMain lake in Thursley’s acid bogBogbean flowers emerging from the main lakePines and Heather – simple but special, compete with a Cuckoo singing, a Stonechat, and a Dartford Warbler
Shimmer and sparkle: many pairs of ovipositing Azure Damselflies – seven seen here, there were at least fifteen pairs, not to mention …#
Large Red Damselfly (there were several pairs)
Male Bluetail Damselfly on a reed leaf: there were two males tussling, but no female as yet
Yellow and Orange ‘escaped’ Goldfish in GT pond. Perhaps people think ‘setting them free’ when moving house will be a good thing, but they devastate native pond life
Netty with jigsaw cutting out pond minibeasts
(24 May 2018) White-Lipped Land Snail
(27 May 2018) Flooded GT paths after thunderstorm – I never saw the water table THIS high
GT seasonal pond flooded over path, yes, that’s the main path on the right there
GT looking not its best after floods – car parts, bits of fence, railway sleepers, erosion scour, rubbish-filled silt …
Stag Beetle, Lucanus cervus, just landed, wings not fully folded
I was just walking around the triangle, talking to one of the Garden Design students about its natural history, when a mouse-sized animal scurried across the top of a post that we had hammered in to form a dead-hedge above the boundary stones. In my binoculars, it was at once clear what it was, a Stag Beetle. As I pulled out my camera, it spread its wings impressively, and flew a few feet across to the woven top of the dead-hedge, folding its wings but leaving the ends still sticking out of its wing-cases for a while.
Stag Beetle, side view
So, all that work on loggeries may have paid off. Or perhaps it didn’t: behind the dead-hedge was simply a pile of brash and logs, abandoned for several years. Anyway, we’re very pleased to see a handsome adult male out in the sunshine.
Azure Damselfly recent hatch
The triangle’s first batch of Azure Damselflies, surely within a day of hatching, perched on leaves of emergent water-plants, or flew around in cop, laying eggs already. One or two Large Red Damselflies sunned themselves also.
Large Red Damselfly
P.S. A week later, on 4 June, a Lesser Stag Beetle crawled across the lawn in my garden. I guess it emerged from the dead wood stacked in odd corners for that very purpose. It’s a lot smaller than the Stag.
Lesser Stag Beetle in garden
Lesser Stag Beetle, playing dead
I picked it up to ensure I got a photo, and was rewarded with a fine display of thanatosis, shamming dead.
On this lovely hot day, we tried to work, hammering in pegs to fix path edging poles. When we were all a bit dizzy from the heat and effort, we gave up swinging the sledgehammer and had a tea in the hut. Then we did a butterfly transect, which in the absence of anything but Speckled Woods, turned into a nature walk as we photographed all the other interesting insects. The Rose Chafer (on hogweed) is worth looking at full-screen as it’s very pretty.
A brown Shield Bug cf Coreus
Hoverfly Leucozona leucorum
Array of Aphids on translucent Sycamore leaves
These aphids looked amazing with the sunlight streaming through the leaves; the leaves below were spattered with sticky sugar dropped by the aphids.
There was a beautiful Click Beetle too (like Athous haemorrhoidalis) but I didn’t photograph it as we were having too much fun making it go click and jump out of our hands.
Azure pair over Large Red Damselfly
See the Red damselfly? Look up: there’s a pair of Azure damselflies hovering above. Well worth viewing full screen.
Great Tit feeding brood in Nest Box 10
We were pleased (and somewhat surprised) to find a family of Great Tits in box 10, right beside the path, and not terribly high up either, but it was an old and presumably proven nest-site, and so it has proven again this year. I got a blurry photo of one of the proud parents entering the hole, which I had repaired with some aluminium sheet this winter.
Ovipositing pair of Azure Damselflies; female is the green morph
I was very pleased with this photo, with its surreal light and bubbles. I’ve not remarked the green female morph before: most Azure females seem to be a paler, more lime-green form.
Brown China Mark Moth laying eggs on pondweeds
This last photo (taken at quite a distance) shows something very curious: the Brown China Mark, a micro moth that lays its eggs on pondweeds, scurrying over the surface of the water searching for suitable ovipositing sites. In the dazzling light, she was far more reflective than anything else, and I had to turn the exposure down two whole stops to get her about right. The larva is aquatic, feeding on pondweeds.
Not pictured: sawflies; a swift Ichneumon beside the pond (without a long ovipositor, but with a clearly clubbed abdomen); many bumblebees and striped hoverflies. Nests of Peacock butterfly caterpillars too.
Today I “manned the pond”, resplendent in my The Wildlife Trusts T-shirt complete with badger logo on a black background. I didn’t so much as “stand up for nature” as lie down, hoping that the rather lively toddlers waving pond-nets wouldn’t fall in. Their fortunately very quick mother asked me if any children had in fact fallen into the pond, and I replied truthfully that none had done so, so far. And somehow, they didn’t.
In the warm sunshine, the air above the pond was buzzing with Azure and Large Red Damselflies, some paired up and laying eggs, some males patrolling anxiously, chasing off rivals and presumably hoping for some more females to turn up.
The eager dippers caught lots of Greater Ramshorn Snails, and some smaller ramshorns too. Among the haul were some very small Water Boatmen, midge larvae in reds and yellows, water fleas, a tadpole or two, some mayfly larvae (very zippy) with 7 pairs of gills, and some little damselfly larvae (more placid).
Large Red Damselfly on Iris leaf; nice hexagons from camera shutter
Two Sunday volunteers, relaxed and jolly, joined in the pond-dipping: it turned out that the Conservation Officer was out on a flat roof trying to catch a mallard duck and her six ducklings. Unfortunately the duck escaped while they were trying to scoop up the ducklings, so the rescue was abandoned. If the ducklings can’t be got to a pond soon, they’ll starve as the duck has no other way of feeding them.
Queen Bufftail Bumblebee in Yellow Iris …
We did carry out another rescue, however: a very large Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee was sitting exhausted on the boardwalk. We looked about for flowers, and tried her on a Yellow Iris, with some success; but she soon used up the energy its nectar provided. I suggested some sugar-water. This was fetched, and it seemed to have the right effect, as she perked up considerably.
Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee drinking sugar water
Then, in between telling people about the ridiculously complex fertilisation system in damselflies and dragonflies (indirect fertilisation, sperm storage, yeah) and identifying pond animals, I tried to photograph a mayfly nymph with the absurdly limited depth-of-field of my macro lens. What with the white glare from the pond tray, the sun going into clouds, and toddlers leaning into the light to get a better look, it was somewhat difficult. Here’s what I got.
Mayfly nymph in a (fairly) clean pond tray, more or less correctly exposed and in focus
On a lovely May day, we replaced quite a bit of wooden railing, the rail mainly being fine but several of the posts having rotted at the base.
As we worked, a pair of Brimstone butterflies flew nearby, as well as a few Orange Tips, a Red Admiral, a couple of Holly Blues, and a Large White. It was very pretty among the cow parsley, green alkanet and garlic mustard, with visiting bees and hoverflies. A couple of brilliant metallic green Rose Chafer beetles flew over, just above the tops of the cow parsley.
Around the reserve, newly-fledged robins and jays were hopping about unsteadily. A blackcap sang sweetly; a blackbird, a wren and some robins chattered in alarm from a thicket, mobbing a predator, apparently a magpie — most probably as it threatened to rob a nest of eggs or young.
Azure Damselfly pair choosing egg-laying sites together
Above the pond, Azure Damselflies and Large Red Damselflies were in cop and egg-laying (both species); up to three male Small Reds at a time were dashing about in tiny dogfights.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
