Close Encounters by the Garden Pond

Sitting quietly in the shade by my pond cooling down after attacking a few over enthusiastic brambles etc, I was visited by this very beautiful male Southern Hawker. He spent a long while going round the edges of the pond and also inspecting me. After a while he flew away and a female arrived again flying right up to me but this time dropping down onto the moss at my feet and started laying. They were never there together so did he communicate with the female as to a good area for laying and how? (Four other pond inhabitants include the Pirate Water spider Pirata piraticus) 

 

Garden Fauna 16th July

A few insects etc showed themselves yesterday despite the cool wet conditions. There are lots of these small bees (Heriades truncorum Large-headed Resin Bee) on the Ragwort with the Cinnabar caterpillars and the Dark Bush crickets are now mature.

Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey Paxton

 Definitely lower numbers of Butterflies for our June Survey at Paxton but Dragonflies made up for it with large numbers of Common blue damselflies plus a few Azure and Variable and, mostly strikingly, very large numbers of Emerald damsels and in areas not previously recorded. Here a few images from the day, including male and female Emeralds and Banded Demoiselles, a species of  Potter Wasp, a Red-tipped Clearwing and  Wilke's mining Bee

Paxton Green-eyed Hawkers and Flight Shots

I spent some considerable time trying to get good flight shots of insects and I have still not got an image where everything is right! The first damselfly would be fine if the nearer wing was positioned in the space behind the legs and the beetles are soft on the wing cases. While photographing the Four-spotted chasers, a coupled pair of Green-eyed Hawkers arrived and then a second male waiting to get in on the action if he can. Pyramidal orchid included as first one I have photographed at Paxton Pits.

Paxton Pits May Butterfly and Dragonfly Survey

Although warm and sunny there were worryingly few butterflies around though the Dragonflies made up for them with good sightings of Norfolk Hawkers and a very good year for Banded Demoiselle numbers. A lot of time was spent early on refreshing our ID skills for Variable (narrow or exclamation mark top thorax stripe, spur mark with stem, short amount of blue on S9 and 'bat' mark on tail segment), Azure (wider top stripe on thorax, but less than Common, Spur mark no stem, large amount of blue on S9 and spur-type mark on tip of abdomen) and Common (very blue thorax, wine glass mark, lots of blue on abdomen etc). Other dragonflies photographs are Blue-tailed Damselfly and Four-spot and Scarce Chasers. The highlights of the very few Butterflies were a Small Copper and a Grizzled skipper - the latter in a new area so hopefully they are spreading. I couldn't resist two other subjects that caught my lens - a Sallow Kitten moth caterpillar and some Sawfly larvae.