Saturday 4 June 2011

Lazy, hazy day(s) of summer

A glorious, hot day at the farm today brought out hundreds of dragonflies over the ponds. We counted eight species, including Red-veined Darter and Keeled Skimmer. The most abundant were Black-tailed Skimmer, Four-spotted Chaser and Common Blue Damselfly (Dougy's photos of the first two below). I got no shots of them (they're too fast for me) so I'll settle for a couple of orchids, a common bird, a rare moth and two showy individuals from the trap the other morning, which contained 215 moths of 49 species.

Four-spotted Chaser


Black-tailed Skimmer


Heath Spotted Orchid


Fragrant Orchid


Meadow Pipit



Small Grass Emerald, our rarest resident moth. This is a nationally scarce and declining species, with very few recent records outside its strongholds on the Lizard peninsula and the New Forest.


Gold Spot


Elephant Hawk-moth

1 comment:

  1. A nice set of images there Andy. Sounds like you had a good weekend with the dragonflies. Good news also about the Marsh Fritillary.

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