Ruddy darter

At the risk of being boring, I've decided to blip another dragonfly today. But you'll have to forgive me because it's their time of year, and all too soon they'll be gone.

I took Chris to Woodwalton Fen, as he wanted an afternoon to wander about and ponder his third year research project. I also had a shorter walk around, making the most of the very warm summery conditions. There were very few other people around and it was lovely to walk among the swaying reeds, scattered with occasional drifts of marsh sow-thistle about eight feet tall, as well as the more lowly purple loosestrife, yellow loosestrife and tufted vetch. White flowers of frogbit and yellow flowers of bladderwort decorated the ditches.

Woodwalton Fen is much less wooded than Holme Fen and today the dominant dragonfly was the Ruddy Darter Sympetrum sanguineum. This species is smaller than the Common Darter and its legs are entirely black. It also has an intense orange colour at the very base of the wings. The males become blood-red with maturity and the abdomen has a characteristic club-shaped appearance.

When I first became involved in nature conservation this species had a strongly south-eastern distribution, and was considered to be nationally scarce. Now it can be found much more widely, and over much of England and Wales it's worth looking closely at any very deep-red darters to check their identity. On some sites around Peterborough this is the dominant kind, and the Common Darter is actually rather scarce! It's also a pain to photograph as it rarely keeps still!

We had some very spicy chicken kebabs for tea. The recipe for the marinade contained two green chillies, which I put in before deciding to test their strength. Belatedly I tasted a tiny piece on the tip of my tongue and spent the next fifteen minutes or so enduring an intense burning pain in my mouth and with my nose streaming! Luckily it didn't seems so bad when cooked. But blackberry sorbet was a nice cooling end to the meal!