Ah, There You Are!

It just gets worse and worse, doesn't it? I don't know, he gets himself a job and the blog goes out the window, never mind his poor devoted readers...

In my defence, I managed to damage myself [[::Cue the violins..::]] and, while it hasn't stopped me working [I'm from the school of 'If You Can Walk, You Can Work'] it has put a bit of a crimp in the birding / dragonfly bothering. Plus there's the New Job Syndrome. And it's summer. And the weather's been annoying.

Ok, bleating over, time for some fun! New job means new working practices, one of which is Compulsory Holiday. The Powers That Be, realising that at certain times of the year all parents want time off, decided the easiest way to keep things running smoothly and prevent strife is to just make everyone take time off together. [[This is the French Model, by the way]] So, this week I'm off work. Woo. Its half term, there are kids everywhere, the weather's a bit grotty for odonata but not grotty enough for seawatching. Joy.

I said enough moaning, didn't I?

Today I've had some proper fun, though it did take a fair bit of standing around glaring at the clouds. Little Bradley Ponds was my destination, looking for Downy Emerald Dragonflies. I'd not seen any there last year, but [Famous Devon Birder and Dragonfly Finder] had success recently, so I shamelessly followed his coat-tails. This was also where I found Scarce Blue-tailed Damselflies last year, and while its early for them, this year's been early for everything, so it was worth a look.

Despite it looking more like rain than sun, I took the camera and even succeeded in photographing something with a reasonable chance of it coming out. Ok, this was an orchid of some sort [Hey, it sat still with no intervening vegetation], but it might come out. If it does I'll inflict it on you, and Karen can tell us all what it is. :) I also tried for a teneral damselfly which looked interesting, but that probably won't come out [light was horrific, and the wind started blowing...]. other than that I kept to the bins.

Tangent time. I don't know if you've ever frequented the optics areas of Certain Famous Online Forums of a Birding Nature, but if you have you'll most likely have come across someone reviewing binoculars and moaning about the focussing being too fast. [By 'fast', I mean that it takes very few turns to go from close to far.] [[By making that so clear, I've demonstrated that I spend far too much time reading those posts..]]. Because I'm Good [[Ish]] I have always refrained from giving the response that again came to my mind today, as I watched a couple of 4-spotted Chasers and an Emperor have a minor disagreement about who owned that bit of sky. "Try watching dragonflies, mate!" No such thing as focus that changes too quickly. A busy pond is the ultimate test of your bins - today I was surprised to find the only thing I'd change about mine an issue, as a Downy Emerald got inside the close focus distance and hovered, about 1.5m from my delighted eyes!

Downy Emeralds can be a bit of a pain. Not only are they scarce, with a few small sites scattered around, but they are pretty hard to see even when you find a site. They tend to pay only flying visits [Ho Ho], spending most of their time in the trees, where small green dragonflies are hard to see.. When they do arrive they zip around low down, all hustle and bustle, none of this stately cruising or finding a handily prominent perch to sit on, oh no. If you do get a good look, though.... Metallic dark green with a bronze sheen, an elegant waspish shape - enhanced by the tendency to hold their abdomen up in the hover - and the most brilliantly bright emerald eyes. Before, all my Downys were "Ooh, it's a Downy - damn its gone!" type affairs. I got ridonkulously good views today. I mean WOW good. [[You knew it was coming..]] They took a lot of waiting around, though. Admittedly the very first dragon I saw was a Downy, but it was the usual zip-through and then a whole heap of nowt. With increasing sun came more activity - plenty of the standards - but no Scarce Blue-tails. A couple of teneral Blue-tails got me going - being very small and hesitant they looked promising until I got optics on them [which can be a fun game all by itself].

More odonata-dipping happened yesterday, when I stopped off at The Old Sludge Beds on the way back from Exeter. The book says that Small Red-eyed emerge 2-3 weeks after Red-eyed, and as the Red-eyes are back [[sorry]] early courtesy of the warm weather I figured what the hell. A couple of promising tenerals may even have been SRE, but as the book has no teneral images [drat] and I didn't get enough of a look to rule out female coenagrions anyway... There's plenty of time for them yet, though. There were some nice Red-eyeds, and a very confiding Hairy Hawker which buzzed around my feet, but the action was confined to wherever there was shelter from the brisk wind.

Another wander around Yarner has also been had, with even more Pied Flys than the time before! Also more than one Redstart, which was a shock, plus Wood Warblers, Tripits and a Garden Warbler. It is so very green there, and was amazingly quiet for a weekend. The sun even came out as I meandered the back ways with a mellow smile on my face.

Very belated and utterly late news from the Garden - the Sparrows in both the old nestbox and the neighbours' eaves fledged their first broods while I was at Beesands. Yes, that long ago. Because I was out, and as there's so much cover for them to hide in, I can't say how many successfully fledged, but there's a fair few juveniles knocking around, so I'd guess at least half a dozen each. Interestingly, this is exactly the same day as the first brood got off last year - though then it was only in the eaves, with the pair then switching to the old box for number two [Increase in population or fewer sites to choose from? Answers on a postcard.] [[I say this with certainty because the female [whose first mate had the unfortunate encounter with an open window] has a white feather in her right median coverts, which stands out and so I can say that she's breeding in the eaves again this year]].

And finally.... Got Chaffinch on my Work List! ;)