Beautiful indeed...

Four days away surveying in Sussex means that I'm again way behind with my blips - this may be the year that I never quite catch up!

With high temperatures and thunderstorms forecast, we were out of the house early to visit a small area of marsh south of Kettering. We narrowly avoided getting stuck in a 7-mile tailback on the A14, but ended up taking a rather devious route with several slow sections.

It was still cool when we arrived about half last seven, but three hours later it was decidedly toasty. Having visited all parts of this small site we decided to head for home and return another day to do the detailed recording. 

The flowers were fairly humdrum, but this female Beautiful Demoiselle was a very obliging subject, perched on a sunny area of bramble, a good lookout area for hunting prey. 

Interestingly both Banded and Beautiful Demoiselles were co-existing on this particular section of the River Ise and the females look somewhat similar - luckily I had a face-on photograph which confirmed that this was a Beautiful Demoiselle, though its larger size, coppery wings and copper abdomen all pointed to this id.