Demoiselle delight

"Yesss!!!" I hissed, when I first spotted him. "You gorgeous creature! Come to me, my Precioussss..."

Luckily, there were no other humans in the fishermen's car park at Cleeve Prior Mill at the time, or I'd likely have got some very Special Looks. As it was, the Banded Demoiselle was unimpressed with my invitation, and far from coming to me, promptly took off and doubled the distance between us. I'm wondering if I maybe laid the Sméagol on a bit thick.

Seriously though, I wasn't surprised that he was twitchy, because he was fresh, and more significantly, at that moment he was the only one of him in sight. Demoiselles aren't exactly clubbable, but they tend to hang out where they can see others of their kind, presumably on the basis of there being safety in numbers. Being the first to emerge at a site, then immediately being spotted by a large potential predator, must be a pretty scary experience. Which is doubtless why we spent the next half hour playing Grandmother's Footsteps around the clearing (where the temperature was in the upper 20s and the humidity about 5000%), with the Banded Demoiselle becoming increasingly flighty, and me becoming hotter and sweatier by the minute, and more and more desperate to somehow get the Precioussss on camera.

Eventually I lost him altogether, and after searching all the vegetation around the entire site, I decided, despairingly, that he must have gone up into the trees. Oh well, I thought. You did your best. And there's always tomorrow. At which moment I turned to go back to the car, only to find my quarry sitting peaceably, back turned, on low vegetation a couple of metres behind me. Thus, my first Banded Demoiselle photograph of the year was a shaky long lens shot of a set of blue claspers. Luckily though, having decided for some reason that I wasn't a threat after all, he suddenly became quite happy to pose, and after several minutes of edging steadily closer, I was finally able to get a selection of frame-filling images with the macro. I'd like to say that in the end we parted as friends, but I dare say he'll have forgotten me by tomorrow.

Before I go, I've been meaning to recommend an app I've recently started using. It's called Encounter Nature, and there's some information about it here. It's aimed at people in the UK, with prompts about seasonal wildlife and links to nature and conservation articles and organisations, as well as a personal journal feature which I find really useful for noting what I see when I'm out and about. My entry for today says: "Cleeve Mill pm: 1 male Banded Demoiselle. HoE/Barton: 7 male Banded Dem & 3 female along the river; 2 of the females teneral. Cuckoo calling in Dorothy's Wood. Kingfisher along north side of the river, then up the bank and away towards Bidford Grange." Having a written note of exactly how many of what species I saw where helps me when I submit my records (often quite belatedly), and means that I don't have to try to photograph every insect that crosses my path. And beyond that, it's just rather nice to have these brief journal entries. Without today's I'd probably have forgotten the Cuckoo and the Kingfisher by now, but reading the note rekindles those memories.