Verdant

I put my back out overnight, which wasn't the brightest idea I've had all week. A session on the shakti mat and some judicious stretching eventually got me moving, but by this point it was late morning, and hot, and tramping across the fields to Grafton Wood suddenly had less appeal than it had when I conceived the plan last night. And I needed to go to Stratford anyway, to get some bits and bobs, so I decided to combine shopping with a river walk.

I'd expected there to be Migrant Hawkers around Lucy's Mill Bridge by now, because they've been out for a while, but there were none. Two or three Brown Hawkers were whizzing around, and a couple of Common Darters, but generally things were pretty quiet. I've chosen this Banded Demoiselle tonight because I like the almost monochrome palette of this image, but also because we're nearing the end of the demoiselle season now, and I don't know how many more chances I'll have this year to photograph them.

In related news, I'm currently ploughing through record shots from last autumn and uploading them to iRecord, and I was moderately incensed this morning to be told that my record of a Banded Demoiselle from 23rd September 2022 couldn't be correct, because this date was too far outside the accepted season for the species. I was asked to check the photo again, but as by this time I'd deleted it, I couldn't simply send it off to have the exif checked, and had to plead the case in other ways. My best evidence turned out to be the fact that I'd mentioned this damsel at the time in my journal, so I sent a link to that, and I'm now waiting to see if Blipfoto can save me from having a perfectly good record rejected. Sigh.

My second photo tonight is a Comma, feeding on burdock on the edge of the path that runs from Lucy's Mill past the Shakespeare Marina to Weir Brake Lock. Like many butterflies, Commas will flip their wings closed if you get too close to them - I guess so as to offer a smaller target to a potential predator - but while that can be annoying when you want to photograph the overwing pattern, in this case it works, because it shows off the 'C' mark on the underwing that gives this butterfly both its binomial and common names.