On the trail of the Red-Veined Darter.

With lots of people seeing Red-Veined Darters it seemed to be a good idea to visit Stansted Airport Lagoons, a traditional site for this species in invasion years and a top spot for local odonata, so when Mike gave me a call it was a no brainer to join him to try and find what for me would be a lifer.

We got to the lagoons, now carefully manicured to remove practically all vegetation, and started the search. It was all quiet until we got to the corner out of the wind in the NW when the mayhem started.

Several Emperors, lots of Black-Tailed Skimmer, a few four-Spotted Chasers and two Broad-bodied chasers. Lots off azure/common, a few blue tailed, and a couple of large-red-eyed damselflies, were all whizzing around in the corner, and in the midst of these several bright red darters. We spent a while looking at these, but it was hard. They were territorial on the edge of the water, but were constantly chasing away larger dragons so getting a good view was difficult. One alighted on the grass with better views, but it didn't have much red in the wings - was it a Common Darter? I got a few shots of a few of them, got excited by some reddish on the wings and list fever was beginning to set in. Mike was as always the voice of calmness and sense so we carefully looked for the evidence, but much was dependent on the quality of my photos, taken with a long lens hand-held. Regular readers could be forgiven for having some scepticism as to the outcome at this point.

It was evident as soon as I downloaded them and checked the photos against my new copy of Dijkstra that we had the Darter! here's some photos. they show the key features, a reddish hue at the base of the wings, pale pterostigma, and on a couple a blue colour to the lower eyes. Fantastic! And that bright red colour will remain in my memory for a while.

the first photo I looked at .... the red in the wings, and the pale pterostigma are really noticeable.

blue colour of the lower eyes here

we wondered about this as it had very little red in the wings, but pale pterostigma and blue lower eyes seal the id of this one too.

Overall there were about five darters of red colour of which we are happy with the identification of three as red-veined.

Whilst all this was happening a Banded Demoiselle flew by and we saw a couple of Small Red-Eyed Damselflies on some vegetation. A Common Tern spent some time, and also 15 Lapwings, Tufted Duck, Little Grebe and a family of Greylag Geese. We had several Marbled Whites on the fields, as well as Ringlet , Essex and Small Skipper, Small Heath, Meadow Browns, a couple of feeding huddles of mainly Large whites but also small and green-veined whites, a Small tortoiseshell and as no list is currently complete without a Painted Lady we had one of those, and also two forms of Latticed Heath Moths. 

Literally, a red-letter day.

July photos

A couple of trips. Firstly Rainham Marsh RSPB. Marsh Harrier and Bearded Tits notwithstanding, it was all about the insects. There were masses of workers on the Lavender in the car park and I think these were Brown-Banded Carder Bees, mainly because at least one of them was a carder bee with a brown band. Difficult to photograph in a suitable pose, I am nevertheless quite pleased with the art in these photos.

Then a few Shrill Carder Bees, an Emerald Damselfly in the Cordite area that I am told is a Willow Emerald, and some more common stuff - the Hornet Mimic Volucella Zonaria which I now see more often than I see Hornet.

Shrill Carder Bee worker

Willow Emerald

Then with David today to Stansted Airport Lagoons for waders followed by another trip to Hatfield Forest to see Purple Emperors. Needless to say this did not go as planned. There was a lone Lapwing at a very full lagoons, but there were up to ten damselflies on algae pads on one of the lagoons. David was sure these were Small Red-eyed Damselflies and having looked at photos the step on the end of the abdomen does match the photos and is quite distinctively different from Red-Eyed. A flicker in the foliage turned out to be another Willow Emerald.  We left the lagoons quite happy with our haul and went to the Forest. We walked round the NW corner of Hatfield Forest finding little new in the way of Butterflies, and no sign of the Emperors but did see plenty of Ringlets and Gatekeepers sunning themselves. We paused from looking down long enough to see a Raven fly over which is a good record for the forest.

Willow emerald

Gatekeeper sunning itself

Finally a reminder that wildlife is exploding all over. David's eagle eyes spotted a freshly emerged Six-Spotted Burnet Moth. Quite fantastic it is too, with its damp wings still creased.

Black Necked Grebe - Stansted Airport Lagoons

Birdguides had one last night so I dropped in this morning to see if it was still there. And there it was, a stunning bird. Surely even someone of my limited photographic skills couldn't cock this one up...

it did a spot of preening showing off its white belly ...

Local Rarity

The local grapevine worked exceptionally well today when a pair of Ring Ouzels were located at Stansted Airport Lagoons by Mike this morning. I popped in early pm and was put onto the pair by Graeme - thanks to both.

The pair were grubbing round at the base of some willows on the bans of one of the lagoons. It was impossible to see them from the same bank without taking a risk of spooking them, so I connected with them from the other bank. The photo is poor even by my standards, but it was taken at around 100 metres.

Also present a Greenshank, 2 Common Sandpipers, 2 Little Ringed Plovers, and a Swift.