Warm

This afternoon I made my first trip to Croome for several months, hoping to see some dragons. R sensibly cautioned me before I set off not to have too high expectations, because the clearance work at the lake over the past few years caused quite a bit of damage to the habitat, and the last couple of Odonata seasons there have been poor. I'm glad to report though that the marginal vegetation is coming back, and the lake is returning to something like normality.

Natural environment 1 : 0 Capability Brown

Mwahaha.

Damsel-wise, most of the usual suspects were present, though there's still an upsetting dearth of Red-eyed Damselflies since the pink bistort was cleared. It is coming back though, so with luck the Red-eyes will return too. I didn't see an Emerald Damselfly either, but they seem to have become quite scarce in the Shire generally over the past few years, for reasons that aren't entirely clear.

The main dragon in residence today was the Black-tailed Skimmer, with several males patrolling the lake edge, perching on sunny surfaces, and bickering whenever they caught sight of each other. Most pleasing though was my first sighting of the year of some Ruddy Darters, of whom this fresh female posed most cooperatively. She was thinking about performing an obelisk manoeuvre to reduce the surface area of her carapace exposed to the warm afternoon sun, but kept losing interest part way into her 'handstand', and this was as high as she got during the time I was watching her.

I stopped for coffee on the way back to the car park, and was very happy to bump into my friend Richard Clifford outside the café. All in all, it was a very good afternoon.

R: C2, D16.