Tolerant

Every year I try to make myself love Grafton Wood, but I've never managed it yet. It's a flagship reserve for the local branch of Butterfly Conservation, having breeding populations of both Purple and Brown Hairstreaks, along with Wood White, White Admiral, Silver-washed Fritillary, and now, it's rumoured, Purple Emperor as well. But it's too big, and too far (three and a half fields) from its car park, the ponds aren't especially photographer-friendly, and I haven't walked it often enough for the lay-out to have embedded itself in my mental mapping system, so I quite often find myself taking a wrong turning and failing to find the precise spot I was aiming for.

Nonetheless, at least once a year I find myself setting hope over experience, and trudging across the three and a half fields in search of something unmissable, and for this season, today turned out to be that day. I was heading for Trench Wood, which is one of my happy places, but as I drove through Grafton Flyford I somehow found myself turning into the car park, shaking my head at the likely folly of the enterprise, but then shrugging my shoulders and thinking Well, I've parked now - I might as well give it a go.

What can I say on the positive side? I caught a brief glimpse of a Brown Hairstreak, though it didn't stop to let me take its photo. I bumped into another photographer, who told me that Tiddesley Wood near Pershore is currently vastly more productive of inverts than Grafton - helpful information, on which I may well act over the next few days. And I found several nice Opiliones, which I think were Leiobunum rotundum, a species I hadn't previously spotted this year. On the down side... well, to be honest, pretty much everything else. Still, I can now say that I've done Grafton, and tick it off my list; we will not speak of it again this year.

The real saviour of my afternoon was this lovely female Common Darter, whom I spotted quite by chance resting on a dock seed head, right at the edge of one of the main rides. She was surprisingly calm and tolerant, allowing me a twenty-minute photo shoot at very close quarters before finally deciding that she'd had enough, and moving herself deeper into the scrub, away from my intrusive lens. We began in good light, but by the time I took this it had clouded over, which is why the image is a little on the dark side; the flatter light worked for me though, in reducing the highlights on her face and giving extra definition to her eye facets. It's worth viewing full-screen, if you have the time.