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Pushing the Boundaries

Posted on by John Curd Posted in France, 2011 spring — No Comments ↓

When we first retired we began taking six week trips to France. Last year we extended that to seven weeks, braving the presence of Satan’s Little Disciples in the last week of our trip. This year, in lieu of a spring trip in Britain, we decided to go a week earlier than before which pushed us into the eight week arena, still much less than some of our acquaintances but a bit “scary spiders” for us, nonetheless.

Crossing on 15th May, our first three weeks were blisteringly grand – France was having an excellent spring in the same way that we i Britain did. The French spring had been so “good” that many of their regions were already in a drought situation with water usage restrictions. What’s good for the tourist isn’t so good for the farmers, which is where the vast majority of their water goes.

IMG_9797_Two-spotted_Dragonfly The Dragonflies seemed to be enjoying the fine weather, too. Our first significant stop was for two days on Le Loir at a village called Luché-Pringé, reasonably close to Le Mans. Last time we were here our car broke down forcing us to stay for nine days while “la Vectra Anglaise” was repaired. This visit was smoother, fortunately. On our second day amongst the dragonflies beside the river, I spotted a stranger. The stranger steadfastly refused to settle but I managed to grab an in-flight shot of the culprit receding as it headed for the middle of the river. I had no idea what it was and consulted more experienced spotters upon our return. This character is a (probably male) so-called Two-spotted Dragonfly or Eurasian Baskettail (Epitheca bimaculata). Our location put it somewhat beyond its accepted range, so it was quite a rare spotting. One of my experts also said that they’d never seen an in-flight shot of this species before so I was v. lucky to get it.

IMG_1452_Violet-marked_DarterIn the second half of our break, most of which was spent in relatively unsettled weather on our favourite dairy sheep farm at Fanjeaux, we, that is to say Carol, spotted another interesting visitor. I actually missed it engaged in placating other English campers with an electricity problem – and I still haven’t forgiven myself. I Was prepared to book a special trip to Sardinia to see these stunning beasts. Carol, with the “wrong” lens on her camera, managed to grab this excellent shot, nonetheless, and described it to me as being “like a Scarlet Darter but pink”. When I looked I shelved my disbelief and knew immediately that this just had to be a Violet-marked Darter (Trithemis annulata). At best this, also, was on the north-western edge of its range and possibly beyond. What a staggeringly beautiful creature and I’m still as sick as a parrot that I missed seeing it.

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WordPress Conundrum

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — 2 Comments ↓

Some time ago I used WordPress to set up a website for our local U3A group. The site doesn’t do anything very complex, basically advertises the group’s existence and activities, and stores a few PDF documents such as Membership Forms, etc. The main “blogging” feature of WordPress, I used for a Notice Board to keep folks aware of any recent developments.

Everything went very well, the committee seemed very pleased and I handed control over to a willing webmaster, after a suitable few hours of training in the WordPress administration panels, of course. Naturally, as part of the learning process, a few errors crept in which I was able to sort out but, all things considered, everything progressed very smoothly.

This spring I left on a relaxingly long trip to France. Well, relaxing except for the fact that our caravan’s water pump decided to fail resulting in a wet sleeping bag and requiring a fix.

Another issue arose: my now reasonably experienced webmaster emailed me (courtesy of McDonald’s McWiFi) to say that he couldn’t successfully enter new Notice Board (blog) entries. He’d enter a title, enter the body text, hit <Publish> and … all the body text disappeared, just the title remained. “Oh, and I can’t get bold to work or back up and overtype text that I’ve already entered”, he said, just for good measure.

Weird, I thought, and, once again suffering the hubbub that is McDonald’s, I signed on myself and proceeded to invent a new Notice Board entry apparently with no problems. Hmmm!

Mr. Webmaster continued to try, it continued to fail. I even set him up a new administrator id which also failed. (Probably not an error with his id, then.) Two other committee members tried to make minor edits to our website content and, frustratingly, they reported similar errors – text went missing. (Probably not an error caused by Mr. Webmaster’s laptop, then.) I continued to edit without error. Was I dreaming? I could find nothing to fix since nothing would break for me. I had to leave it until our return home.

We are both now back so this morning we got together to investigate. Nothing had changed – his laptop still failed to edit a new entry successfully, mine was fine – but now, I could see his failing so I had to shelve any disbelief. This is a web application for Darwin’s sake, there shouldn’t be any logic differences. What’s different?

Momento! I habitually use either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to browse the ‘net. I never use that Internet Explorer rubbish. Mr. Webmaster’s machine is, like many other peoples’ machines I suspect, equipped only with Internet Explorer, in this case IE9.

I installed Firefox (v.5.0.1 – I like it a lot) on Mr. Webmaster’s machine and tried again. Lo and behold, the incomprehensible editing problem vanished! Mr Webmaster was suitably gobsmacked. Wow!!

I found a report of similar reports of WordPress and IE9 clashing badly on the ‘net. There was a thought that slightly older versions of TinyMCE (the editor) failing with IE9.

Our WordPress installation was at version 3.0.4., the latest being 3.2.1. WordPress releases come out fairly swiftly but I don’t see the point in constantly changing unless there’s a good reason. Now I seemed to have a good reason so I upgraded the installation to WordPress 3.2.1. and tried again on Mr. Webmaster’s nasty IE9 system. All was now well, Mr. Webmaster could once again edit the content of our website.

IE9 is pretty new. During my French trip, Mr. Webmaster doubtless upgraded his IE installation from IE8 to IE9 which is when things began to fail.

Ain’t technology wonderful?

Panoramic Pretences

Posted on by John Curd Posted in France, 2011 spring — No Comments ↓

IMG_9920_Anax_imperator I am a traditionalist. This may seem a little strange for someone who spent their entire career in technology but it’s certainly true. I suspect it stems from my father who was a craftsman, a joiner in fact, with a very traditional, manual approach. I like to do some things the old way. As a result, I stuck with real film cameras until just two years ago when, spurred on by others and by the time required to digitize film through a scanner, I finally jumped into the digital SLR market with a Canon EOS 40D. I’m very glad I did ‘cos I couldn’t take half the wildlife pictures I now take using slow old Fuji Velvia slide film, beautiful though it was. This hovering Emperor Dragonfly (Anax imperator), for example, is not practical at ISO 50. It was actually shot at ISO 800, f8 at 1/1000th sec.

Whilst still in film mode, I fell in love with images obtained (by professionals, I hasten to add) using a stonkingly beautiful medium format panoramic landscape camera called the Fuji GX617. This beast produces images that measure 6×17 cm images on a 120/220 roll film, be that negative or positives (as in slide film). A 120 film takes only 4 images, 220 manages 8 Unfortunately, as well as being unwieldy, the camera and its associated lenses cost about £10K so I just drooled and admired pictures from the likes of David Noton.

Enter: the flexibility of digital processing at home.

We’ve just returned from a trip around France where I found a couple of landscape views that seemed to be crying out for the 6×17 format so I deliberately shot them with the intention of cropping them down chez moi. BTW, I’ve sized the main images linked to these thumbnails, at 1000 pixels wide so they should fit on a typical 1024-pixel screen.

IMG_9975_Man_and_tractor_seascape The first image I couldn’t resist was of this man wading back, apparently out of the sea, to his tractor. I love the sense of isolation and confusion, though maybe the latter is just me. “What’s going on here, then?” Actually, just off shot to the left are his mates in a small fishing boat waiting to be recovered by him and the tractor. He’s actually walking up a flooded concrete ramp.

IMG_0045_Rocamadour Rather more obvious is this very traditional (other than the 6×17 format) touristy shot of Rocamadour. Without this format it is difficult to show both Rocamadour on one side of the valley and the opposing cliffs without too much sky at the top and/or green fields at the bottom.

IMG_0825_Les_Brugues Farming provided my next opportunity and is really the land-based equivalent to the fisherman shot above. Our favourite dairy sheep farm at Fanjeaux is in very picturesque countryside but the width of this view would again give far too much sky and/or cornfield on a traditional 35mm (3×2) format. On the far left horizon is the church tower of Fanjeaux itself whilst on the right is our host’s neighbouring farm. The harvester  is sandwiched nicely between the two.

IMG_0829_Damselfly_orgy The same dairy sheep farm has a lake for irrigation purposes and the lake supports a healthy population of Odonata. Damselflies tend to indulge in massed ovipositing, large groups of pairs all trying to lay eggs at once to ensure the continuation of the species. The groups are often too deep to get everything in focus but on this occasion the group was relatively wide but shallow. This also seems to work in good ol’ 6×17 format. Most, if not all of these are Small Red-eyed Damselflies (Erythromma viridulum).

I do most of my cropping in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional these days ‘cos I shoot RAW and who should understand Canon RAW better than Canon? Of course, to make a decent print of such pictures would require an A3 printer and probably a few more pixels than my EOS 40D. I’ll just have to wait until the new kit turns up. 😉

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GPS Conundrum

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — 4 Comments ↓

We have two Garmins. Garmin A is a basic walker’s device called an “eTrex h” (the “h” is for high sensitivity). Garmin B is a nüvi something (and what’s that umlaut all about?) for our cars. A friend of mine has one of the earlier eTrex (no “h”) models which is quite prone to losing contact with the satellites when walking under any moderate tree canopy. Mine seems better so the “h” has apparently done some good. However, both GPS devices have trouble when I turn them on inside our house; they go into “acquiring satellites” mode and usually fail. The eTrex h even helpfully asks, “are you indoors?”

Now, the French are quite keen on building tunnels so that they can pile roads, particularly autoroutes, through mountains that have inconsiderately been thrown up by the forces of nature in the road engineers’ way. I appear to be able to drive through a 1km tunnel with hundreds of feet of rock above my head without the nüvi (what is that umlaut all about?) losing touch with the satellites; my track remains well plotted on the road.

If Garmin nüvi can’t see thrü (if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em) my skimpy roof tiles at home, how does it manage to see through a mountain?

Jüst cürioüs.

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Testing Technology

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — 1 Comment ↓

We’ve just returned from a walk in the company of our U3A friends. These walks are fortnightly gentle saunters, ~5m/8kms, through some very pleasant countryside and, this spring, in some very pleasant weather. We don’t usually know exactly how long a walk is ‘cos measuring them is a little tricky. In very distant scouting days, I’d have used a 1 inchOrdnance Survey map and a mechanical wheel device with which to trace the route and approximate its length. Given all the twists and turns on a 1″/mile map, though,  this was inevitably rather inaccurate.

Enter technology in the form of a Garmin eTrex h handheld GPS device. Apart from the archaic serial cable (see “GPS: Garmin Plain Silly”) required to download the eTrex’s information to a PC, a handheld device powered by two simple AA batteries that can track satellites sounds pretty high-tech, and I suppose in some ways it is. Mine even manages not to get lost under a fairly dense tree canopy – the “h” in eTrex h is something to do with high sensitivity. One companion, today’s leader, has an older eTrex (no “h”) which is constantly losing its signal under trees, so beware.

Looking for constructive uses for my toy, I thought it’d be interesting to measure some of our walks using Mr. Garmin. It’s also fun to download the route (through that archaic serial cable) – I use a piece of freeware called easyGPS – and subsequently display the route in Google Earth for added interest.

Given all the technology packed into satellite navigation systems and software development, you’d think that the resulting measurement of a walk would be spot on, would you not? Well, I would. After all, my Garmin nüvi satnav for the car tries to tell me precisely how fast I am travelling and “bongs” annoying warnings at me when I hit the speed limit, or, at least, the speed limit that it thinks exists which is frequently incorrect.

So, as we returned to our parked cars after a very enjoyable walk through some particularly fine countryside, several of our group chanted as one, “how far was that, John?” I pressed a few buttons to get the required answer from Mr. Garmin: 4.77 miles. Several walkers thought it felt longer but there you have it.

I got home (after a brief visit to a local hostelry) and downloaded the route using easyGPS: 5.23 miles.

I fired up Google Earth and sucked the saved .gpx file in to display the route on a simulated earth: 4.98 mile.

¿Que? That’s a variation of damn nearly ½ mile. Assuming that this walk must be approximately 5 miles, 0.5 mile represents a staggering 10% variation in all this wonderful technology. Since I still don’t know how long the walk actually was, I don’t know if I’ve got one accurate reading with two others having a 5% error or what. I do know that 10% over the speed limit can get you a ticket, though, so beware.

Maybe that old mechanical toothed measuring wheel on a 1” OS map wasn’t so bad after all. It certainly never broke down. 😉

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Industrial Wasteland

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Wildlife — 4 Comments ↓

Two years ago, Odonata (dragonflies and damselflies – I’ll use the term dragonflies collectively) began distracting me a little from my long-standing love, butterflies. Last year I became very keen on dragonflies and started searching them out when we went travelling. This year I was waiting with bated breath for the start of the season after what seemed like a very long winter. As soon as the dragonflies were out, so was I, looking for them.

IMG_9343_Broad-bodied_Chaser_male_imm IMG_9456_Broad-bodied_Chaser As a relative newbie to dragonflies, I now realize that the start of a particular species’ flight season (they vary quite markedly) really is the best time to snap it. Firstly, a freshly emerged dragonfly (teneral) is more likely to be in pristine condition and secondly, you get to see the sometimes stark colour variation between an immature and a mature adult. This is particularly marked in the two examples here. Both these photographs are of very clean male Broad-bodied Chasers (Libellula depressa), though they don’t seem to resemble each other that much. As the adult male matures, it develops a blue pruinescence which covers the body. On the far left is an immature male from our recent trip to Suffolk. On the near left is a very neat mature male from Ledburn Pit yesterday.

Being in a well known sand-producing area, we are pretty much surrounded by various quarries/pits that are no longer worked. Nature, with the help of a little management, has been allowed to take over, and very welcome it is, too. There is even a former tar-macadam plant from the days of building the M1 motorway. The plant was razed and that site is also being reclaimed by nature. What is essentially industrial wasteland may not, at first, seem like a likely hunting ground for perfection in nature but first impressions are wrong. It certainly beats tidy parkland where, though wildlife is normally there to be seen, the nature enthusiast is required to contend with people walking dogs (and normally failing either to control them or to clean up behind them), fishermen (generally leaving their beer cans behind) and swarms of Satan’s Little Disciples scaring things away.

IMG_9440_Blue-tailed_Damselfly IMG_9439_Red-eyed_Damselfly My mature male Broad-bodied Chaser wasn’t my only success at Ledburn Pit yesterday. We (I’d bumped into Rory Morrisey again) started off with a relatively new Red-eyed Damselfy (Erythromma najas) and Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans), both flitting about a bed of nettles and both of which eventually cooperated with our cameras. The Red-eyed Damselfly (near right) doesn’t yet have the intensity of colour in its eyes that would be expected in an older specimen.

We soon met a third member of our clan (Bob Henry) and so an enthusiasm of naturalists was once again formed. It was Bob who led us to a small pool where at least three male Broad-bodied Chasers seemed to be harrying a lone female. Nothing changes!

IMG_9461_Four-spotted_Chaser I hit gold in the old pit soon thereafter. Four-spotted Chasers (Libellula quadrimaculata) – I just love that scientific name – are common enough but so far I’d seen one only and that was at a distance too great for a good quality image (it was at Sandhouse Lane NR last year). I was keen to do better so we started circling the main flooded pit. Sure enough, as if it had read the script, a very fresh-looking (it’s wings still glistened) specimen of a Four-spotted Chaser flew up in front of us and came to rest in the grass stems 4m away. We had to work hard to get a shot that wasn’t obscured by flapping grass stems but fortunately our quarry cooperated by staying put and we managed it. Is this not a magnificent creature? I could not really have asked for much better – well, a cleaner background, maybe. 🙂

IMG_9475_Hairy_Dragonfly_ovipositing As if all this weren’t enough, a Hairy Dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) was patrolling restlessly, low down along the bank. It didn’t seem keen on stopping or hovering, unfortunately, but it was my best view of one to date (new to me this year). Then a female gave me the best chance I’d get by beginning to oviposit along the same bank.  She seemed intent on moving on rather faster than my reactions would allow or lens would focus. I did get a shot but it’s a bad one. I include it just because it’s my first ever Hairy Dragonfly shot. Still, you need a quest to keep you going. 😉

Industrial Wasteland is great – just us and the critters.

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Walks on the Wild Side

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Prostate cancer, Wildlife — 2 Comments ↓

prostate_logoI’ve already been away in our caravan since my prostatectomy but the caravan is still a very personal space. However, last weekend was another milestone of sorts in that we ventured over to near Ipswich where we would be staying with some old friends in their space. When I stay old friends, I mean friends of long-standing, of course. 😉 Our friends still work but, courtesy of the long awaited – at least, it seemed long-awaited – Royal Wedding, they’d be chez-eux on Friday so they didn’t mind when we turned up. We thought we’d take advantage of our route and check the RSPB’s HQ at Sandy, Bedfordshire, en route to see who might be hanging around before descending upon them in the late afternoon.

IMG_9293_Smooth_Newt_maybeIMG_9297_Pond_Skater_at_lunch Also courtesy of the Royal Wedding, the roads were very quiet – reminiscent of travelling in France. In this respect, we should have Royal Weddings more often. On second thoughts, maybe not, since they let Satan’s Little Disciples out of school. Anyway, it seemed most of the wildlife was also inside watching the pomp and ceremony. I spotted a Stock Dove (not a Woodpigeon) but it was a very poor specimen, poorly positioned photographically, that would have been better off in some stock. I also caught the green flash of a Green Woodpecker flitting between trees but all in all, it was very quiet bird-wise. Disappointing. My highlight was a small pond where, above a few Smooth Newts in breeding plumage, a Pond Skater (Gerris) seemed to be tucking into a hapless Alder Fly (Sialis). On the surface (pun intended), Pond Skaters look fairly harmless but they are actually pretty fearsome creatures; I’ve seen a picture of several overpowering a dragonfly.

IMG_9305_Herring_Gull_in_reverse On Saturday, strong winds screaming in off the north sea at Aldburgh provided a refreshing blow along the very pebbly beach. Watching seagulls flying backwards was quite amusing. I think this one, a Herring Gull (Larus argentatus), is trying to look behind itself to see where it might be going. 😀 Just kidding, it was making slow forward progress. Less amusing was our attempting to walk back to the car into the headwind. I understood the seagull’s concern.

IMG_9319_Nightingale Another wild and windy but clear day on Sunday proved Alton Water Reservoir to be far more successful on the bird front than the RSPB reserve at Sandy on Friday. A couple of years ago in France, we spent many hours trying to identify the owner of a particularly piercing, melodious voice. We were a little surprised but delighted to hear that same, haunting melody ringing out around the wooded edge of the reservoir. They are secretive birds that normally remain steadfastly hidden in foliage, even at a distance of 3m/10ft, making a photo nigh on impossible. When one obligingly hops onto a branch right in front of you and begins singing, however, one’s chances improve dramatically. 🙂 The tuneful culprit is a Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos). Here’s a sample: Nightingale song

IMG_9343_Broad-bodied_Chaser_male_imm The luck wasn’t over yet. Back to our friends’ back garden for a sunny Sunday barbecue and good ol’ Hawk-eyes Carol spotted what at first looked like a Hornet (large flying thing with yellow on it) buzz into the garden. It alighted on a shrub (don’t quote me about the shrub) and said, “photograph me please”. You can see how the yellow might cause confusion from a distance but this is a magnificent, young and therefore pristine, male Broad-bodied Chaser (Libellula depressa). Mature males develop a blue pruinescence (powdery coating) on their abdomens and look very different. I confess to initially thinking that this was a female, since I’ve only previously seen older pruinose males, before being corrected by my good friends at iSpot. Live and learn!

Another great weekend, if a little on the wild side, and all went well, as expected. How long is this ridiculous but beautiful weather going on, though?

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In Search of Perfection

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Wildlife — No Comments ↓

After yesterday’s excitement of seeing my first ever Downy Emerald (Cordulia aenea) at Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve, I just couldn’t resist returning today with Carol (she had been out volunteering for the Greensand Trust) in the hope that she’d be able to see these very special critters, too. We hit the reserve at about 2:00PM and were confronted by two other cars – another relatively rare feature. My fears about dog walkers – dogs tend to crap on the ground, bark and scare away real animals – were groundless and we were confronted by an enthusiasm of wildlife watchers. [Note: enthusiasm is my new collective noun for those keen on wildlife. 🙂 ]

One of the guys was similarly armed with an example of TheBeast. He and I chatted for a while and he told me there was a trick to getting TheBeast to autofocus with a 1.4X extender attached; normally you are forced to focus manually. Canon causes any lens with a max aperture < f5.6 to refuse to autofocus in the company of the 1.4X which is a drag for those of us with older eyes, especially when modern autofocus cameras don’t provide any manual focussing assistance such as a split-image or a Fresnel screen. The trick is to tape up three of the pins on the 1.4X such that the lens doesn’t know the extender’s there. Autofocussing is restored. It works best in bright light but I’ve tried it and it does seem to work, albeit somewhat more slowly than normal.

IMG_9236_Downy_Emerald Another of the enthusiasm, who turned out to be Rory Morrisey of LBNature, was just scooting off to grab yet another enthusiast. Now we were five. Together we tromped off to a lake which these guys thought was the breeding ground of the Downy Emeralds. Sure enough we found on scrabbling about on a low plant – another female. The reason for her scrabbling about soon became apparent. Whilst yesterday I had seen a female Downy with a minor defect to her right hind-wing, this poor creature had a very badly deformed left hind-wing. What’s going wrong with the Bedfordshire Down Emerald population, I wonder? I was beginning top think that I wasn’t going to get a shot of a pristine specimen.

IMG_9258_male_Downy_EmeraldIMG_9250_Small_Copper We continued around the reserve where I was delighted to see a fabulously bright Small Copper (Lycaena phlaeas) butterfly, which have only recently begun to emerge. Somehow, everything ended up in focus, too. How thrilled was I? Well, not quite as thrilled as when, a couple of minutes later, a male Downy Emerald very obligingly appeared and posed in the perfect position for pictures, Not only was it in a perfect position but it also seemed to be in perfect condition. Brilliant! I was a very delighted enthusiast.

I’ve now seen four Downy Emeralds at Sandhouse Lane and two, both females, have had imperfections. I’m sure damage frequently occurs given the life cycle of Odonata but it would be interesting to know if that’s all that’s happening here.

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Up About a Downy

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Wildlife — No Comments ↓

This is turning into something of a Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve blog at the moment. Being a relatively new member of the Odonata fan club, this is the first year when I’ve been eagerly awaiting the start of the new season. It’s also, therefore, my first chance at logging the season – noting which species emerge when for a particular site. At least it gives me something interesting to do while we’re waiting for the boat to France, though the French trip will inevitably cause a hiatus in my local observations.

IMG_9225_Large_Red_Damselfly Yesterday brightened up very nicely in the afternoon so I popped in for another couple of hours. I’ve been noticing what I think of as a slightly odd feature regarding Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). We’ve been fortunate enough to observe decent populations (~10) at each of three sites recently. The first was at Duck End NR, where we saw about a dozen relatively recently emerged individuals – our first of the season. I returned two days later and saw next to nothing. Similarly, a couple of days ago we spotted ~10 Large Red, including two pairs “in cop” (mating), at Sandhouse Lane NR. Yesterday, once again, there was next to no activity at the main dragonfly pond. I did spot a few individuals lurking about in trees at some distance from the water, though. I’m wondering if this species in particular pulls something of a disappearing act shortly after emergence.

IMG_9179_Downy_Emerald_750 I continued wandering, getting just a little bit down, wondering where all my mates had disappeared to. Then I saw a telltale glint of sunlit wings that promptly settled in a Hawthorn bush. I approached as carefully and was stunned to see a brilliant green metallic body shining in the sun. I didn’t really know what I was looking at but, having been trawling various books on the subject, the phrase “Downy Emerald” sprang to mind. It was certainly unlike anything I’d personally seen before. Suddenly the day changed and became excellent. I needn’t have worried about stealth – this character  seemed content to sit for about an hour while I snapped away adjusting various settings, desperate to get at least one decent shot. I did.

IMG_9213_Small_Tortoiseshell IMG_9207_suspected_Azure_Damselfly I was so captivated I had difficulty dragging myself away from her perch. ‘T was a good job I did, though, because a Small Tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) decided to sunbathe very cooperatively in front of me on some waste ground. The only dragonfly I spotted in this area, on old tarmac plant, was a teneral damselfly which I’m still trying to identify [but suspect it is a female Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella)]’.

Once back at home, I confirmed that my new best friend was, indeed, a female Downy Emerald (Cordulia aenea). She’s not a perfect specimen, unfortunately – she has a blemish on the lower right abdomen and her right hind-wing also is blemished and seems a little malformed. That wasn’t going to dampen my delight at another first, though.

Downy Emeralds are relatively scarce in our neck of the woods so I felt very privileged.

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Colourful Easter

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home, Wildlife — 1 Comment ↓

[Egg-citing Easter was a bit too obvious, even for me, but I thought I should note the possibility.]

IMG_9016_Bluebell_Wood First of all, my dear ol’ mum bought me a lovely Thornton’s dark chocolate Easter Egg. How much of a big kid can you get? To reciprocate, we thought we’d drag her off to a magnificent bluebell wood so she could mutter things like “ooh” and “ahh”. Spring has been such that everything is happening earlier than normal this year. Bluebells burst out about two weeks ahead of their usual schedule and the wood up near Ashridge is one of the more spectacular displays available and attracts hoards from miles around. You have to be patient and/or work hard to get shots sans bright red shirts and tripods spoiling the view but it can be done – just. The scent was fabulous, too, but I can’t embed that with this technology.

The critters that we love are also generally ahead of schedule and are wasting no time doing what comes naturally, making babies while the sun shines. We began on Easter Sunday by visiting the Chiltern Hills on another flower hunt, this time in search of early orchids. It was really Carol in search of orchids ‘cos I’m really only fascinated by things with a heartbeat – well, a pulsating abdomen, more accurately – but it was a great excuse for a trip out with the roof down in this utterly unbelievable run of spring weather. We thought that the orchids might also have been substantially advanced but not advanced enough, it seems. Carol spotted a few telltale spotted leaves of early purple orchids but no actual flower spikes.

IMG_9065_Holly_Blue_ovipositingI’d lagged behind photographing a Holly Blue (Celastrina argiolus) in the act, I think, of ovipositing several future Holy Blues and, as I caught up with her (Carol, that is, not the female Holly Blue), she asked, “do you know a butterfly which is bright green and navy blue?”. Thinks: the only green I can think of is the Green Hairstreak but I don’t think it has any blue on it. “No, not really. Green Hairstreaks are green but …”.

Green HairstreakCarol had scared up an elusive green beast which had fluttered off into the undergrowth. Naturally, it’s very difficult to spot a green beast in green undergrowth but, well, I’m getting used to hawk-eyes Carol seeing such things. Sure enough, she found it again. The beast in question was, indeed, a Green Hairstreak (Callophrys rubi). I think you’ll see the magnitude of the challenge from this picture. I have been fascinated with butterflies for 50 years, since Brooke Bond issued a collection of butterfly cards in their PG Tips tea packets. I’d drink tea just to make mother buy another packet so I could collect more cards. In 50 years of interest, however, I’d never before seen a Hairstreak of any description, green or otherwise. With camouflage this good, is it any wonder I hadn’t spotted one? This was a very special day for me. It certainly made up for the lack of orchids.

IMG_9874_Dingy_Skipper On our way back to the car, carol snagged this shot of the rather unkindly named Dingy Skipper (Erynnis targes). Two had been spiralling about in a territorial tussle and Carol picked the one that was in better condition. I, on the other hand … well, enough said.

IMG_9093_Green_Hairstreak On Easter Monday we turned our attention to our local patch, Sandhouse Lane NR, mainly to see how the Odonata activity was getting on. I’ve recently joined the Bedfordshire Natural History Society and have started submitting records of Dragonflies and Damselflies using their online recording system. They are particularly interested this year in Large Red Damselflies, the first ones to emerge in the spring, so I was keen to contribute what I could to their survey. Damned if we didn’t see three more Green Hairstreaks there en route to the likely dragonfly hangout. The light on this shot casts some very nice textural shadows so I’m forcing this second shot upon you. 50 years of famine and suddenly my world is full of Green Hairstreaks. Weird. 🙂

IMG_9124_Large_Red_Damselflies_tandem Finally we did make it to the dragonfly hangouts where the world was also suddenly full of copulating Large Red Damselflies (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). We saw them at a couple of locations in Sandhouse Lane but this tandem pair is, I think, the best and most interesting shot of the bunch – and I do mean bunch – because it helps distinguish the markings of the male (in front) versus female (at the back). We spotted a lone example of a second species, too, a Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ishnura elegans), though it wasn’t co-operative enough to pose well. Maybe next time.

The season is hotting up.

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