Thursley Dragons

Tuesday was a trip out to Thursley Common to top up the Dragonfly list for the year. It was hot and sunny as we left the south coast but by the time we got to Thursley it had clouded over and there was a cool breeze getting up.

We did make a quick stop over on the way to try and get Dave a Sussex Common Clubtail but we could not find any. Having first seen them just two weeks ago this suggests that the mating period when they are to be found by the river is only a couple of weeks long.

Thursley may have been cooler than we had expected but there were still a lot of Dragons and Damsels to be seen. In particular the wooden boardwalk had warmed up early and a lot of the Dragonflies were using it as a place to  bask and absorb the heat.

The pond was a bit of a disappointment though, with nothing flying around the edges. So no sign of the Downy and Brilliant Emeralds that we had been hoping to see.

First target was the Black Darter. There were a lot of newly emerged specimens to be found in the grass and reeds and a few more mature examples out on the board walk.

Black Darter - freshly emerged male

Black Darter

Black Darter

Black-tailed Skimmer

Black-tailed Skimmer

Common Blue Damselfly

Emerald Damselfly

Emerald Damselfly

Probably an immature Emerald Damselfly

Rather tatty Emperor

Female Emperor oviposting

Keeled Skimmer

Keeled Skimmer

Small Red Damselfly

And a couple of Butterflies. Nice to find a Painted Lady in good condition.

Painted Lady

Painted Lady

Small Tortoiseshell 

Black Darter

On the way back from Holyhead we stopped off at Whixall Moss. I had never been there before and the possibility of a White-faced Darter or Spotty Davus, the welsh form of the Large Heath, made it well worth a visit. Sadly I found neither, perhaps I was just too close to the end of their flight seasons.

The closest I got to a White-faced Darter

The Moss surprised me. I have been on some of the northern sites, Meathop Moss and others. This one seemed to have more standing water but also a lot more in the way of trees and scrub. It looked as though it would be massively overgrown in a couple of years and needed some serious grazing. It would be interesting to see the management plan for maintaining the site.

One real bonus of the site was that there were no dog walkers. Possibly too remote but more likely as a result of a large number of flying insects of the biting type. In fact we only saw one other person in the three or four hours that we spent there.

No White-faced Darters but we did find plenty of other Odonata. Black Darters and Four-spotted were the most common but there were also Emperors, Hawkers, Common and Ruddy Darters, a Golden Ring, and various Blue and Emerald Damselflies.

Male Black Darter

Male Black Darter

Male Black Darter

Immature Male Black Darter

Female Black Darter

Black Darters  - The next generation on its way

It is not the easiest of places to take photographs. Invariably the spot you need to stand for the best shot is a bottomless patch of black water or a layer of very unstable sphagnum type moss. I found that I could not get close enough to use the macro lens and all these pictures were taken on the 300mm and then cropped.

A lot of the time was spent recording distant Dragonfly in the hope that when I put them on the screen at home I would find a white frons.

The only good candidate that I found kept its back to me and my distant shot was out of focus. It looked all black but Photoshop says that it has red patches. Interesting but I think I need a better sighting for a life tick.

Emperor Dragonfly

Four-spotted Chaser

Emerald Damselfly

Emerald Damselfly

 

The mosses appear to be a great area and I only scratched the surface in the few hours that I was there. I can't see the wife wanting to return but I will be going back and this time I will be taking the jungle strength insect repellent.

Brilliant Emerald

My last photograph of the day. It wasn't the Club-tailed Dragonfly that I had been looking for, but I was more than happy to find this Brilliant Emerald. It was on the northern side of the new Stopham Bridge and it wasn't in an easy location to photograph.  I tried a few flight shots but it was just too fast for me.

It did eventually land and I managed to get the shot above but this involved leaning out over some deep water to get the angle and in so doing putting some expensive camera gear at high risk. I would have liked more pictures but fortunately it flew before I had a chance to do something stupid.

The day had started at Pulborough Brooks with a stop to check the heathland pools. The sun had been forecast for 0900 but when I arrived at 11.30 it was still overcast and there were only a few damselflies in the air.

Azure Damselfly

I searched the bushes around the top pool and found a couple of female Darters resting up and waiting for the sun to appear. I wasn't too confident on the species at the time but checking the books at home these were Ruddy Darters.

Female Ruddy Darter

With the sun then putting in a brief appearance I managed to find a couple more on the Black Pool but this time with males in attendance. These are not showing the deeper red of a mature specimen so have probably only recently emerged.

They are easily confused with the Common Darter but commons would be showing yellow stripes along the legs.

Male Ruddy Darter

Black Pool also had a good quota of the Four-spotted Chasers, probably the easiest of all the dragonflies to photograph.

Back up the hill to the top pool and I was fortunate to find a pair of Emperor Dragonflies, the female ovipositing and the male appearing to be keeping guard on her.

Female Emperor

Male Emperor

 Or perhaps he had been a busy boy as a second female then appeared. This one with a notch in its left forewing and with different colouration, showing more green in segments one and two, and more extensive brown markings on the other segments. 

I am aware that the blue/green markings on both male and female are temperature dependant but this is the first time I have noted the colour difference on two specimens flying together.

Female Emperor showing green colouration

Other insects of interest on the day, a Large Skipper and a Silver Y moth, both of which were first sightings of the year for me.

Silver Y Moth

Large Skipper

I had only gone out for a couple of hours to try out a new lens so was quite happy to be going home with a decent selection of Dragonfly shots.

Marbled White

We had a tour around a few of the local sites today looking for photo opportunities with Birds, Butterflies and Dragonflies, with Dave also keeping an eye open for any unusual orchids. It made a change to spend some time on a few of the more usual species rather than focusing on life or year ticks.

First stop was Pagham Harbour where a summer plumage Spotted Redshank was to be found on the Ferry Pool. It was a great bird to see but it stayed just out of range of the cameras. This seems to be the norm on the Ferry Pool these days. As I  remember it, in the past we would get birds closer to the road giving much better views. Perhaps it's just the volume of traffic that you now get on the Selsey Road.

The harbour at Church Norton looked really picturesque in the early morning sun but there were very few birds about. We had hoped to get improved shots of the Hudsonian Whimbrel but if it was still there it was tucked into one of the creeks out of sight.

Next stop was the meadow at Whiteways roundabout on the A29. With the morning warming up there were plenty of butterflies on the wing but the real bonus was freshly emerged Marbled Whites. Not only were they in pristine condition but they are a lot easier to photograph when they are perched out drying out their wings.

Freshly emerged Marbled White

All the above shots are males. The females have a shorter body, golden brown markings on the underside (instead of black), and a golden brown leading edge to the upper wings.

Female - Golden brown leading edge to upper wing

Female on the left - picture from June 2014

Other butterflies seen at Whiteways meadow were Ringlets, Small Heath, and Small Skippers.

Ringlet

Small Heath

Next stop on our tour was Lords Piece. If anything there were too many Dragonflies and Damselflies there. The constant movement meant that nothing had time to settle and the insects rarely stayed on a perch for more than a few seconds. This is really a better site for early morning or late afternoon visits but we did get a few shots.

Ovipositing female Emperor 

Broad-bodied Chaser

Four-spotted Chaser

Four-spotted Chaser
- this one has additional dark markings at the wing tips so is probably of the form praenubila

Another unusual sight were these two Blue-tailed Damselflies. Females come in a variety of colours but this one is an andromorph having the colour of a male. I thought the idea was that she would not be recognised as a female and so avoid harassment by the males. She would then change to a green colour when she reached sexual maturity. The strategy does not seem to have worked in this case.

Mateing pair with andromorph female

We stopped off at Pulborough Brooks as I needed to stock up on bird food. We had intended to walk down to the Black Pool to look for more dragonflies but with the time moving on and the temperature rising we decided to skip this and move on to Woods Mill.

There is a reasonably showy Water Rail with a couple of chicks that we wanted to photograph at Woods Mill. Unfortunately I think we left it a little too long and the chicks are now juveniles. We got good views of one but the mother did not show.

Juvenile Water Rail

Dave staked out a tree where we could hear a Turtle Dove purring. Having already photographed it I went off in search of Demoiselles which I had managed to miss so far this year.

Beautiful Demoiselle (male)

Beautiful Demoiselle (female)

Despite lots of purring the Turtle Dove did not show in the open but there were at least more dragonfly opportunities around the pool whilst we waited.

Four-spotted Chaser

I came home with about 400 shots in the camera. My usual keeper rate is about two in a hundred but with the pristine specimens of Marbled White it rose to about twenty five percent today. What do you do with about sixty almost identical pictures of a Marbled White?