Roost

It was grey this morning, not especially warm, and there was a strong gusty wind blowing. I did my usual "woe is me" grumbling about the unlikelihood of finding any decent inverts in the garden, then gave my head a bit of a wobble. At least a dozen Southern Hawkers have emerged from our wildlife pond over the past month, and many of them seem to have stayed in their natal territory - a couple of days ago there were three hunting around the top garden at the same time - so even though this was perching rather than hunting weather, I reasoned that it shouldn't be too difficult to find one.

In the event it took less than two minutes of scanning with the binoculars for me to find this mature male. He was resting in one of our large viburnums, which for my purposes isn't the most attractive of shrubs, but it worked for him, giving him good claw holds whenever the wind increased. That casual left forearm might give the impression that he was having no trouble staying put, but in fact there were times when all his wings were streaming out behind him, like the ears of a spaniel with its head outside the window of a moving car.

R: C4, D15.