Demoiselles in the Meadow

In the weekend sun, banded demoiselles have now appeared in numbers in Sconce and Devon Park, in their favourite patch among the cow parsley and reeds by the little ponds volunteers dug at the Old Wood end of the pasture.

They sit on the broad leaves, bottle blue males and metal green females, still as figurines until you breathe, at which point the flutter off a couple of metres back out of camera range. Like all damsels and dragons, their semi transparent and slimline nature makes them extremely difficult to shoot.

Especially if the photographer is rubbish.

There were lots of meadow browns and ringlets out and about in the sun too, especially up on the Sconce itself where there were more ringlets than I can remember seeing for a little while, fresh and velvety black out of the packet. But they'd never settle at all, unlike the meadow browns which were very partial to a drop of white clover.

Also hard to pin down were a couple of robin fledglings, probably a second brood as I'd seen fledglings in this same place well over a month ago now.

I don't want summer to end, before we have had a summer.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 05.07.16