late May

another dismal spring passage draws to a close -- after a night in the forest with plenty of Nightjar activity ( note the lack of Nightjars in these images) a walk round the patch produced a peeking Tawny chick a huge emergence of Blue-tailed Damsels and the first Red-eyed Damselflies for the clay pits -- it is strange that I have looked at these lilly pads every year since the mid 1980's and never seen a Red-eyed (or Small Red-eyed) but today there were 5 males and a mating pair -- the clay pits are generally poor for odonata as most of the pits are brackish or have poor water quality and a dominance of phragmites -- to date this is the 20th species to be recorded in 23 years of recording and we have still not had Small Red-eyed in spite of them being all around --