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Odonata Confusion

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

Source of confusion I’ve only very recently begun to try to identify dragonflies and damselflies. This new found interest was entirely due to the relative plethora of the things at our local Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve. On the left is one of the first I spotted. I had no idea what it was but I snapped it and hurried home, metaphorically speaking, to identify it. In my book, Insects of Britain and Western Europe by Michael Chinery, I spotted a diagram that looked similar. It was a diagram of a female Keeled Skimmer. Excellent! In my mind, my new found friend became a female Keeled Skimmer.

Male Common Darter On a subsequent visit I was excited to discover further different species such as those on the right. Although there are several superficially similar red-bodied species, I was pretty sure that this was a male Common Darter. When in doubt, settle on the common. On that visit I was also fortunate enough to witness a pair of Common Darters mating, joined in what is apparently termed the Copulation Wheel, I was happy with my new found interest.

After my third or fourth visit a concern formed in my mind. The concern turned to serious doubt. A male Keeled Skimmer has a relatively broad light blue abdomen according to my field guide. Whilst I hadn’t seen anything resembling such a thing here, I was happy to believe I had female Keeled Skimmers. Furthermore, though I had witnessed mating pairs of Common Darters, other than those that were inverted in a Copulation Wheel and thus difficult to see, I hadn’t actually identified anything as being a female Common Darter, either. Very suspicious! Not only very suspicious but such a state of affairs would do nothing at all for the great Mr. Darwin’s cause. We can’t go having dragonfly immaculate conception now, can we? No, that would never do.

A swift trawl of the Internet found a few photos of female Common Darters. Ah ha! Just as I had begun to suspect, my female “Keeled Skimmer” was, in fact, most likely to be a female Common Darter. Normality restored, mating may continue and species may go forth and multiply.

The trouble is my field guide is particularly weak on females. It is very happy to show the males in all their normally colourful glory but it tends to steer clear of the females. Only a few females are shown. The females, it appears, can be quite similar to the untrained eye and mine is certainly untrained.

Unidentified 1 Unidentified 2 I did snap a couple of dainty damselflies that still completely elude me. I have no idea what these two are, though I have suspicions concerning one. I’ve even emailed them off to the British Dragonfly Society to see if the experts will help me out. I’m wondering if they might be immature specimens with colours not yet fully formed. I’ve heard nothing back yet.

Clearly, I need a better field guide.

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Closer Focus

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home, Wildlife — No Comments ↓

Two days ago at Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve I watched a fellow snapper using a close focussing ring on a long telephoto lens (500mm in his case). I had discounted our old close focussing rings ‘cos I had tried them on my 17-85mm digital lens and they had not fitted. Digital lenses foul older non-digital mounts and will not fit. I thought no more of it. However, my brain jumped out of neutral with the sudden realization that my trusty old 75-300mm IS lens is not a digital-specific lens. I could try the same close focussing trick. Yeah! Back to Sandhouse Lane.

And now for something completely differentFor this attempt I decided to try the middle-sized ring of our set of three: 21mm. This seemed to get my focus distance down from the “naked” 1.5m to about 1.2m. With a close focussing ring I can’t focus on infinity but I wouldn’t want to. Just for a little focussing practice, since this is all a manual exercise rather than automatic, I tried zooming in on some blissfully stationary flora, ragwort in this case. Of course, the fly was moving but not much. With a little judicious cropping I found myself rather liking the result (right). Carol thought the picture would be better if the fly were looking into the frame but it’s looking the way it felt like looking. One has to go with what one can.

The business end of a Ruddy Darter Up close and personal with another female Keeled Skimmer Enough of practicing on static subjects and on with the main, more mobile subjects. Since it was perching very prettily, I couldn’t resist yet another shot of what I think is a female Common Darter (left). The purpose, after all, was to get more detailed shots using the lens ring rather than to find new subjects. I was using f11 (which gave me 1/500th) but even so, with this set up the depth of field is very narrow and focussing is a bear; sway a little on your feet and you’ve lost it. Eventually I began trying f16 and here’s what the business end of a Common [Ed: correction, 2010-02-08] Ruddy Darter looks like (right) when it stayed still for long enough, which, of course, mostly it didn’t. I may need some more practice before trying a larger focussing ring to get closer still, assuming the subjects would actually let me, that is.

Ovipositing in theTandem Formation Maybe because the sun was out, there was more courtship and mating activity going on over and around the pool so I removed the close focussing ring – there was no way I could focus on anything fast moving with that – and chanced my arm again. With the naked 300mm lens shots at these distances have to be heavily cropped (this shot is about 25% of the frame) and so get a little more fuzzy but here’s the best of the bunch showing a pair flying in the so-called tandem formation for a spot of ovipositing. Let’s face it, with the speed these pairs fly, my focussing is at best a swift grab, something of a guess. Worth a try, though, when you’re not wasting expensive celluloid. “They’re just reusable pixels, guv’ner.” 😉

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Odonata Party

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — No Comments ↓

Odonata is the order of insects that includes the dragonflies and damselflies. Today, while Carol was off meeting her genealogical pals, I went off to meet some of my insect pals. Another chap wandered in flashing a new Canon EOS 50D equipped with a 500mm Sigma lens and a close focussing ring. Grrr! I carried on regardless with my EOS 40D and 300mm lens. [Note to self: really should replace our old film SLR close focussing rings with some that are compatible with a digital body.]

Green-veined White feeding on a thistle The butterflies really had quietened down even though it was quite sunny to begin with. I was trying to find a small white to add the collection but they were either too ragged or too uncooperative, sometimes both. I did, however, manage to grab another shot of a Green-veined White (left) which, given its high-contrast background, seems quite artistic to me. I am, however, a self-confessed artistic numbskull and hardly qualified to judge.

Probably a bumble bee Probably NOT a bumble bee. The thistles were, as usual, attracting various bees so I snapped a couple of them for good measure and a new subject. I thought the markings and colours might make them relatively easy to identify. Silly me! I remain clueless as to their identity.

Inappropriately named Common Darter (I think) The very delicate White-legged Damselfly I think this is a female Keeled Skimmer The real gems came down by the side of the pond which seemed to be teeming, relatively speaking, with damselflies and dragonflies of various sorts. It was also teeming with silly folks with 300mm lenses slipping on grass and falling on their backsides with a jarring crash. Ouch! However, I recovered and was particularly keen on a new species for me: what I think is a so-called Common Darter (far left). I wish creatures with such wonderful markings and colouration were not called “common” but I get their point. I was also excited by the very delicate White-legged Damselfly (middle left). Of course, I had no idea what I was snapping until I returned home to the books. I think the third suspect (near left) is a repeat of a female Common Darter but don’t quote me.

The tandem position ovipositing The copulation wheel formation I was most intrigued by what I correctly guessed was egg-laying activity. I’d seen some pairs both flying and resting coupled together. This formation, I now know, is called the copulation wheel for obvious reasons (left). Following that, however, the pairs of some species fly along joined in what is known as the tandem position for ovipositing whereby they repeatedly dip down to the water to allow the female (rear of the pair) to deposit her eggs. They move very fast and it’s darn difficult to snap them but I tried and got something half-way recognizable (right).

At this rate I’ll be joining the British Dragonfly Society. They have a place at Wicken Fen that must be worth a visit. 🙂

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Insect Album

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

Due to popular demand

I received a suggestion that I group together some of our insect photographs, mainly butterflies recently featured in this blog, to form a composite Insects photograph album. Since I was considering doing exactly that, I’ve done it. I was originally thinking “Butterfly Album” but then realized we had, over several years of travelling through France, collected several other insects of interest that might have objected to their omission.

For those sharing my fascination with our six-legged friends (from which category I personally may have to exclude wasps), the resulting album can be found at:

http://www.curdhome.co.uk/photos/Insects/index.htm

This addition has caused a slight reorganizing of our photograph album index page but I think I prefer the change.

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More Insects

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home, Wildlife — No Comments ↓

Sunday was a day for recovering after the excesses of Saturday night entertaining so we were taking it easy. The sun deigned to put in another appearance (Saturday was good, too) and I thought things were a little too laid back so I finally dragged myself back to our local Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve to see what the locals were up to. Now we’re into August things certainly seemed a little quieter but I did find a few specimens at which to point my camera.

I think this is a Keeled Skimmer The ubiquitous Large White butterfly My first victim was what I now believe to be a female Common Darter (left). Originally I suspected it was a female Keeled Skimmer. Unfortunately my Insects of Britain and Western Europe field guide, purchased by Carol for me last year, is particularly poor on the female of the species, showing only a few, and some confusion arises. Internet photographs to the rescue, thankfully. This specimen’s right hind wing is missing a wing tip, unfortunately, but it was worth capturing. The rest of the inhabitants of my butterfly patch were the more common suspects this year: Painted Ladies and Large Whites. I managed to snag a Large White (right) with partially open wings just to add to my collection but I really need to adopt my Corfiot Cleopatra hunting technique for these, catching them in flight. That technique would be made easier with Corfiot levels of sunshine, though.

A pleasing Silver-Y MothA moth with which I was unfamiliar dropped in on the thistles and began feeding, fluttering rapidly all the while and never resting. I banged off a few speculative frames and was delighted to find that I’d lucked out; one fortuitous shot captured the wing patterns pretty well. Back at the ranch, I noticed what I hoped would be a distinctive white mark on both forewings so I began flicking through my trusty insect identification book again. Sure enough, the Y-shaped white mark gives a number of similar moths their names. The constant fluttering whilst feeding makes me think that this one is the so-called Silver-Y moth. (There are also Beautiful Golden-Y and Plain Golden-Y moths.)

Male Common Blue Female Common BlueWandering around the reserve I spotted what I thought was a different blue butterfly, one of those with little or no blue colouration. Like the dragonfly, It wasn’t a great specimen but I snapped it for identification. Maybe the damaged specimens are due to the fact that we’re coming towards the end of the season after some frenetic mating and territorial spats. My “new” blue turns out to be the female Common Blue, after all. I’ve repeated my male Common Blue shot for comparison.

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Flaming Frustrating

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

If you possess only one barbecue, it should be a Weber 22½ inch kettle. There’s just something quite impressive, for those who’ve not seen it, in extracting a golden brown, hickory-smoked whole 15lb turkey from beneath the lid of your barbecue. It gets even more impressive when the assembled diners realize that, for some reason, Webers tend to keep the food moist rather than drying it out. A rare and much-appreciated feature when it comes to turkey cooking.

Fortunately, this doesn’t apply to me. I’ve got four barbecues, five if you count the brand new, still boxed replacement Weber kettle lurking in our loft ready for when my 20-year-old trusty original finally gives up the ghost, though two of them are portable travelling barbecues.

Barbecues should, of course, be charcoal powered. Anything gas-powered may superficially resemble a barbecue but it is really just an oven in the garden. All my barbecues are charcoal powered. Real lumpwood charcoal is the finest fuel for direct grilling of things like fish and steaks but, to power the indirect, long-cooking required for the smoked 15lb turkey trick, charcoal briquettes are most appropriate; lumpwood just doesn’t burn for long enough. The aptly named American Kingsford charcoal briquettes are best – they are, indeed, king – but regrettably we cannot buy them in the UK. (It has been known for friends to hand-import them but we really need a bona fide supplier.) No, we must put up with inferior briquettes that emit noxious fumes when first lit. Fortunately, these noxious fumes get driven off reasonably rapidly, within about 15 minutes or so, before the real heat builds up and you start cooking. Only the neighbours get tainted and not the food.

A week or so ago, my winter charcoal stocks having finally been depleted in our thus far inglorious so-called summer,  I was out buying some new supplies. I was quite excited to see something new on the market this year: Weber charcoal briquettes. Since Weber knows everything there is to know about charcoal barbecues, presumably they also know a lot about briquettes. They claimed to burn hotter and longer than regular briquettes. Maybe these would prove to be a reasonable substitute for Kingsford briquettes. Maybe these would not emit such plumes of noxious fumes. I bought two 7Kg bags and prepared to hickory smoke a turkey (only a 10 pounder) for some friends.

When the day came to bronze the bird, I threw two fire lighters (a lazy but trusted technique) into my charcoal chimney along with my new Weber briquettes and lit up. For some reason, I also shut the air vents, as recommended by my hand-importer of Kingsford, even though I usually leave them open.  A little smoke began to drift upwards so I went to make other preparations as it burned up. 15 minutes or so later Carol spotted that there were, indeed, very few fumes being emitted from the Weber briquettes. Regrettably, there also seemed to be very little in the way of heat being emitted from the Weber briquettes. Yes, they had failed to light. In 20 years of barbecuing, I had never before suffered an ignition failure. Panic! Reload with the old, trusted noxious fumes generating briquettes and start again. Better and, after a couple of hours, a beautifully-bronzed hickory-smoked 10lb turkey.

I tried the Weber briquettes again yesterday. No guests this time, just a modestly sized chicken for myself and Carol. I also took the precaution of using three lighting cubes and reverted to my normal technique of opening the air vents to get a good draw. Smoke began to drift up. After about 10 minutes the smoke died down. The heat also died down. My second ignition failure in 20 years. This stuff certainly doesn’t emit nasty fumes. It doesn’t emit anything.

I decanted the Weber briquettes, half-filled the chimney with noxious-fume generators and topped off with the recalcitrant Weber stuff. Finally, success! The regular smelly briquettes fired up readily and seemed to generate sufficient heat for long enough to force the Weber briquettes to burn.

I’ve no idea how one is expected to light these blasted Weber briquettes without other charcoal. I think a blow-torch or tactical thermonuclear device would be needed. Very disappointing!

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Remote Control

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — No Comments ↓

I never had a remote controlled anything when I was a kid. My father, being a joiner, did build a couple of sailing boats that we took to Verulamium (St. Albans) lake but they were free-sailing with no more than some rudimentary rudder control that I failed to understand. I once built an aeroplane with a glow plug engine that took for ever to start but that was a control-line plane designed to zoom around in circles on the end of two wires that operated the elevators. Eventually the time came for its inaugural flight and my father struggled gamely to start the recalcitrant engine. Once started, yours truly grabbed the control lines in preparation for my patient father to release my new toy. Being a complete and utter novice, as dad let go, I unwisely applied a handful of elevator whereupon the hapless balsa wood plane left the safety of my father’s hands, flew straight up, arced over my head and smashed itself to smithereens into the ground behind me. Its maiden flight was all of ¾ circuit. It never flew again. Given my apparent piloting skills, I certainly didn’t want to break anything as expensive as a remote controlled aeroplane, not that I could have afforded one.

On Wednesday, a delivery van arrived with three boxes containing the components of a mover for Billy Bailey (our caravan). I’ve been watching such devices increase in popularity over the last few years but until recently had resisted. They looked very handy for the infirm or those who can’t get their head around the logic of reversing an articulated unit but I didn’t put myself into that category. However, we did seem to have increasing situations when we’d like to have pitched Billy differently were it not for having to have the car attached. Occasionally a “discussion” would arise revolving around where someone would like Billy pitched versus where I could actually pitch Billy. Flexibility overcame reversing pride and we placed an order with Powrwheel.

Billy having a fit Billy's new mover This morning soon after 8:00 AM a fitter arrived to fit Billy’s mover. It consists of two electric motors, one to drive each main wheel. These are powered by the on-board leisure battery. I decided to go the whole hog and order the power actuator too, the device that puts the motor’s drive shaft into contact with the wheels and retracts them. That’s frequently a manual exercise. The fitter was delighted with Billy’s pedigree since the Bailey Pageant Monarch is apparently a straightforward fitting job. He clearly knew what he was talking about ‘cos he was done by 11:00 AM.

After a little instruction I managed to drive Billy off our neighbour’s driveway (borrowed while they are away for the    Look Ma, no car! Docking manoeuvres - gently does it. fitting job because it’s flatter than ours) and park him in his usual space to prepare for the off. Billy didn’t hit anything and Billy didn’t crash. Much better than an aeroplane in lots of pieces!

Later, heart in mouth, I even managed to drive Billy out of his parking spot and up to the towing hitch of the car, and all without the aid of a safety net. Brilliant!

I’ve got a remote controlled toy at last. 🙂

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Sandhouse Lane Revisited

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home, Wildlife — No Comments ↓

Speckled Wood On Friday Carol was off playing with her mother and I was left at home to amuse myself. So, after I’d finished my chores, I took myself on another hunting expedition, armed only with a camera, to Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve to see if I could add to my growing collection of insect portraits. The sun was being typically shy when I arrived so the only activity in which the butterflies seemed interested was resting and conserving energy. Inactivity makes them a little difficult to spot so I resorted to the rather unsubtle device of tramping about in the vegetation to scare them up. Close to the trees I managed to disturb and track a Speckled Wood (right) which obligingly settled back down on the ground for me to photograph.

Southern Hawker Southern Hawker head-on Common Blue Damselfly I wasn’t seeing anything else new in butterfly land so I wandered around the rest of the reserve to see what else I could find. What I found was quite a few damselflies and dragonflies, a couple of which cooperated long enough for me to get the camera fixed on them. The damselfly (right) is a so-called Common Blue Damselfly. That seems to be a rather ignoble name to me for such an attractively marked and delicate creature. The dragonfly (left) is the similarly common (what else would I expect) but somewhat oddly named Southern Hawker. I assume it doesn’t keep spitting and the only thing that I can see it selling is death to other flying insects. Imagine being a modestly-sized fly and having that giant screaming at you head-on. This specimen had a wingspan of about 3 inches/75 mm.

Gatekeeper Green-veined WhiteThe sun did put in a half-hearted appearance for my second hour and managed to liven up the locals a little. On a second visit to butterfly heaven I snagged a better shot of a Gatekeeper (left) courtesy of there being more light making possible a tighter aperture setting. Then, as I was leaving, a couple of whites began feeding perfectly positioned at my eye level. How considerate of them. Whites can seem a little tedious compared to their more colourfully marked cousins. They also tend to keep their topsides hidden since they most often settle with their wings closed. In the case of this Green-veined White (right), though, the situation was perfect as the markings giving rise to its name are on its underside. Just look at the eye, too. It’s speckled – quite staggering.

A very worthwhile trip from an initially unpromising day.

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Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home, Wildlife — No Comments ↓

On Sunday, Carol introduced me to one of the sites that she and her colleagues at the Greensand Trust look after, the Sandhouse Lane Nature Reserve. The reserve is a relatively small area surrounding a disused sand pit and is sandwiched, some might say hidden, between Heath and Reach and the A5. Much of the trust’s conservation work somewhat perversely seems to involve pulling plants up and/or cutting trees down. However, it also seems to be effective. Almost as soon as we had entered the reserve, we came across an area seething with Lepidoptera. I had to content myself with looking since I was unfortunately without a camera.

Yesterday, having first busied myself with an arduous job replacing one of the towing electrical sockets on our car, I corrected my original oversight and returned to Sandhouse Lane in the late afternoon camera-in-hand. Well, camera-in-rucksack actually but you get my drift. Butterflies like sun as much as I do and, since there was little in evidence, I wasn’t certain that my intended subjects would cooperate but cooperate they did.

Comma butterfly Gatekeeper/Hedge Brown Right inside the gate I ended up stalking a Comma butterfly (left), albeit slightly the worse for wear (which I noticed only after returning to process the shots). It didn’t settle for long before it zoomed off to tussle with an intruder, presumably hence its wear. Incidentally, it’s called a Comma because there is a tiny white mark in the shape of a comma – on the underside. Next up was a brown (right); brown butterflies are many and various and can be difficult to identify in the heat of battle, as it were. Photos help greatly; they may not be quite as effective as an ether jar and a magnifying glass but the pants weather damages populations quite enough without over-zealous collectors imposing further reductions. This one is a Gatekeeper, a.k.a. Hedge Brown.

Common Blue - topside Common Blue - underside Small Copper In this summer (I can’t believe I said that – this, a summer?) of Painted Ladies, Sandhouse Lane had what looked like more than its fair share but, having snapped a Painted Lady on our buddleia recently, I was more interested in other quarry. [Aside: good Lord, stalking quarry in a quarry, what a silly language!] On our first excursion I’d seen an unidentified blue and what I suspected was a Small Copper. I was hoping they’d reappear and sure enough they did. Blues are a little perverse, sometimes closing and sometimes opening their wings. Frequently so-called blue butterflies are so perverse that they are brown. This blue (left) was actually blue, however, and turned out to be a Common Blue (well, of course). Considering my amateur’s lens together with their small size and nervous disposition, I was pretty pleased with the result. The Small Copper (right) isn’t quite such a clear shot but it’s worth a look and will do me for now.

IMG_2378 Six-spot Burnets having fun Six-spot Burnet The thistles were doing the main work of attracting many of the critters. I managed to grab an even smaller butterfly that I think is a Small Skipper (left) and a striking moth called a Six-spot Burnet (right). The shot where I seem to have gate crashed two Six-spot Burnets having some fun together shows all six spots more clearly. Well, alright, all twelve spots since there are two of them. It looks as though there may soon be a lot more Burnets – far too many spots to count. 🙂

I must return if we ever get another dry day.

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Sunshine and Showers

Posted on by John Curd Posted in Life@Home — No Comments ↓

Our particularly unsettled weather, since the aberration that was Wimbledon fortnight, has been considerably ameliorated by several hours coverage each day of the three-week-long Tour de France. That all came to a stunning end on Sunday when the young Manxman Mark Cavendish, brilliantly aided by his Columbia HTC team, utterly annihilated all opposition on the final sprint finish on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. It’s been a great Tour de France for us with Cav’s amazing six stage wins and Bradley Wiggins finishing a very creditable fourth. Bravo!

Now we are left wondering what to do as the entertainment ends but the showers and/or threat of showers continues.

One thing I’d been doing is leaping out during commercial breaks stalking butterflies that were visiting our buddleia bush. I’d also been trying less successfully to stalk some Daylilies that Carol has blooming in our garden. One might have thought, since butterflies move whereas plants remain rooted to the spot, that flowers might have proved easier to snap. Not so for me, apparently. Whilst I grabbed a few acceptable shots of butterflies, an acceptable rendition of a Daylily had eluded me.

Raindrop bejewelled Daylily Today however, with the sunshine intervals being little longer than commercial breaks, the mixture of sunshine and showers combined to provide a suitable subject pleasantly beaded with glistening raindrops. After a little judicious dead-heading by Carol during which the lily pollen attacked her clothing (oops, sorry!), I finally managed to capture a shot that I liked. I’m particularly taken with the tiny bead of moisture sparkling atop the flower’s stigma (that’s the pollen receptor though I doubt any pollen is going to make it through that water).

Most species need a decent summer. Let’s hope the weather improves soon, for us, the flowers and the butterflies.

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