Down but not out

June and July are the prime months for Black-tailed Skimmers, but it's about six weeks since I last saw one, and I assumed that they'd now died out in this area for this season. So I was surprised to see this old male - wings pretty shredded, but otherwise looking fit and energetic - on the same piece of stone channel by the lake at Croome as was being guarded by a Skimmer in early June. It may even be the same dragon, since they're highly territorial, and have favoured perches to which they return time and again.

This discovery was a rare piece of good news at Croome today. I searched the lake area for almost two hours without finding a single Migrant Hawker - a species that I'd expect to be almost swarming the lake by this point in the season. I fear that this is what you have to expect when the reed beds are cleared in the middle of Migrant Hawker season: a large number of their eggs end up as compost. Also noticeably absent though were Common Darters, which is harder to explain, especially as there were good numbers of Ruddy Darters around the lake and patrolling the flower beds. The reed channel at the south end of the lake was under the control of a single male Southern Hawker, and there was a second male in the shrubbery, but I failed to find other large dragons. There were still some Common Blue, Azure, and Blue-tailed Damselflies around, as well as a single elderly male Emerald, but it took me the entire afternoon to find (right at the end of my second circuit, when I was on the point of giving up) a solitary male Small Red-eyed Damselfly.

My friend RC, to whom I'm indebted (as ever) for pointing me towards some unusual fungi, pointed out that it was extremely windy today, which tends to depress Odonata numbers. This is certainly true, and I'll have to see if I can visit again on a warm, still day, to see if I can achieve better dragon and damsel counts under more favourable conditions.