Broad

This is the first Broad-bodied Chaser I've seen this year, and I think he's the first I've ever recorded in the village (though a couple of summers ago I was pretty sure I saw one pay a flying visit to our garden). He was alone today, but he can't be the only one of his kind in the area, because he has tell-tale scratches on the side of his abdomen, made by the claws of one or more females during copulation. 

I almost didn't include this pond on my walk this afternoon, because the field's owners opened it up with a mechanical digger last year, at the same time as they filled in the only mediaeval ridge-and-furrow ploughing system left in the village, to make the field flat. By committing this piece of vandalism they almost destroyed the habitat, and up until today I hadn't seen a single sign of life there. Even now, well into the growing season, this clump of rush is the only vegetation in the pond, and as Chaser males all practise an alternate patrolling then perching strategy he was compelled to use it - and I was compelled to step right down into the puddled mud at the edge and lean precariously round the clump to get this photo. Having got my dragon I was glad I'd made the effort to walk the field, of course, even though the current state of it renders me (perhaps fortunately) almost speechless with rage.

In other news, I've been charmed to hear that this weekend the Boy Wonder insisted on watching a film of me mowing the top garden with the tractor, on what must have seemed to his parents like endless repeat. After about the tenth time of viewing the same 30-seconds of footage, he commented approvingly, "She's getting very good at it now!"

R: C2, D11.