Male Golden-Ringed Dragonfly, on GorseDowny Emerald Dragonfly over Moat Pond, Thursley CommonBlack-tailed skimmer in a bog poolLarge Red Damselflies in cop over a bog stream, a pleasant corner on a hot day. The female is immature, with brighter colours than older females of this species. The female Large Red Damselfly has a black line along the top of her abdomen. Keeled Skimmer – these little guys were whizzing about like crazy!
Also seen: one Emperor over the Moat Pond; Common Darters; Southern Hawker; Common Blue Damselfly.
Four-Spotted Chaser, on a fine lookout
There were few birds about, but they were good: the only pair of Curlews nesting in Hampshire, both seen, and both heard, flying from their nestplace over the bog, calling continuously (and evocatively) and landing separately; Dartford Warbler, a terrific view, the long tail cocked, and hopping about on a tuft of dry grass; Stonechat; Skylark; Buzzard. On the main lake, just Mallard, Coot, Tufted Duck; on the Moat Pond, Moorhen.
Don’t eat me!Emperor moth caterpillar being eaten by ants
Thursley Common scene looking across bog with dead Pines, open lake with Canada geese, encroaching Birch scrub and Pine forest in the distance
Goldfinch atop Pine tree
Tailless Lizard on boardwalkHoney-scented banks of Bell Heather, Gorse, Birch on Thursley CommonBee-Wolf with Bee preySmall Ammophila Sand-wasp, scurrying about in the heather searching for preyThursley Common: managing the heather by mowing irregular stripsBlack-Tailed SkimmerKeeled SkimmerBlack Darter, a tiny dragonflyCommon DarterThursley Common – the sandy paths full of sand-wasps and bee-wolves, the heather full of bees and grasshoppers
Also saw Common Blue Damselfly, Southern Hawker, Emperor Dragonfly.
Black Darters in wheeL The pools were very low from a month of drought, and many of the dragonflies correspondingly distant, but this pair came obligingly close.
Keeled Skimmer male sunbathing on boardwalk. Some definitely like it hot. Ask me about poikilothermy sometime, I’ll explain it to you.
Thursley Common boardwalk, bog, pools, pines, birch scrub, distant hills. A Hobby flew up, its back rather uniformly grey-brown. Seen soaring later from the side, its moustachial stripe was conspicuous.
Bordered Grey Moth, Selidosema brunnearia (a Geometrid) in heather, its caterpillar’s favourite food
Beautiful Golden Y Moth, Autographa pulchrina (a Noctuid), hiding in heather
Robber fly on bell heather
Small Sand Wasp, Ammophila pubescens, continually in motion on a sandy path
Right at the end of the walk, a huge leaf-green Emperor Moth caterpillar (Saturnia pavonia), whorled with black tufts on each segment, walked briskly like a self-propelled cylindrical concertina across the boardwalk. Just as I grabbed my camera and leant up close, it fell down the gap between two planks and disappeared into the thick green grass below. It was a sight to behold, as long and thick as a finger.
Round-Leaved Sundew Drosera rotundifolia, an insectivorous plant
Red-topped Cladonia floerkana lichens
OK, ok, you wanted some dragonflies. There were masses of Black-Tailed Skimmers chasing about in groups at Pudmore Pond. Black Darters, Common Blue Damselflies, and Small Red Damselflies skittered about the smaller ponds. A large Hawker or two dashed past, unidentifiable, probably Southern Hawker. A Keeled Skimmer perched conveniently nearby, daintier than the Black-Tailed.
Among the birds, some 50 Swallows were roosting on telegraph wires early in the day. Families of young Stonechats gave grating contact calls, unlike the stone-clicking call of the adults. A Redstart flicked its tail in the bushes. Skylarks rose and sang almost too high to see against the clouds over the heathy hills, Shelley described it perfectly in his ‘To a Skylark’: “a flood of rapture so divine”.
It was suddenly summer again this morning, so I packed cameras, binoculars and a sandwich and went down to Thursley in glittering sunshine. This photo perhaps catches something of the dazzle and sparkle of the bog pools and their shimmering guardians: a pair of Keeled Skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens) are flying over the water; she is darting down to lay eggs, he is hovering above, guarding her from other males. Their wings sparkle and flash, and it is amazingly difficult to follow, frame, focus and shoot fast enough to get anything like a decent picture. But I rather like the motion blur in this one, and if it’s not perfectly in focus, you know why. I hope you like it too.
Emerald Damselfly
I was pleased, too, with this shot of an Emerald Damselfly, the sparkling water behind it forming a pattern of pleasantly out-of-focus circles.
Small Red Damselflies in Wheel
There were quite a few Small Red Damselflies about, mostly single but a few egg-laying pairs; and a modest number of blues, most likely Azures.
Apart from the hundreds of Keeled Skimmers, other dragonflies included Common Darter, Black Darter (I only saw a few females today), Black-Tailed Skimmer (just one), and Southern Hawker.
Large Skipper on Bog-Cotton
We saw few butterflies apart from Large Skippers which bustled about flowers near the boardwalk, and little Gatekeepers (I do mean they were smaller than usual) … until we arrived on the amazing Parish Meadow that was once a dump for emptying cesspits. Now it has an ecology strikingly unlike the rest of Thursley Common.
Centaury on Parish Meadow
The meadow was full of Meadow Browns, Graylings (mating), Ringlets, Essex Skippers, a Brimstone, Large and Small Whites, and … a Purple Hairstreak (about the Oak trees). The rabbit-bitten pasture, dotted with little flower-stalks of Centaury, was thick with Ragwort, which in turn was richly covered with Cantharid beetles, solitary bees, wasps, and hoverflies and other Diptera. We put up a Silver Y moth which obligingly landed in front of us and perched in the open. We found the traces of a Green Woodpecker killed by a Sparrowhawk; but happily saw a live one in the Oaks nearby.
Cantharid Beetles Rhagonycha fulva mating on Ragwort
Silver Y Moth
Sparrowhawk Kill – this Green Woodpecker’s flying days are over
The boardwalks were busy with Lizards and Skimmers sunning themselves.
Lizard on boardwalk
We met a local group of birders, complete with masses of tripods, telescopes and cameras, and asked if they were looking at the Stonechats. No, they replied, the Hobbies, there are three. We looked up, and sure enough there were three raptors. But in our binoculars, they turned out to be a Kestrel, a Hobby, and a Red Kite! Perhaps there were some more Hobbies somewhere else.
A little way further, absent the birders, we found a dead tree with some juvenile birds perched about it, and a lot of twittering. Yeah, a typical Chiswick Cafe. Some of them were young Redstarts; the others, young Stonechats: pretty confusing. But the Redstarts flew up into a Pine tree – not a Stonechatty thing to do – and sure enough, there was an adult Redstart on a lower branch, plain to see. And a Stonechat adult rasped out its grating call over to the right.
In a group of tall Oaks, we sat and ate a sandwich; and a Spotted Flycatcher flew across and perched on a high dead branch. It spent five minutes looking about, twisting its neck remarkably, but making no sallies. When I was a boy I saw them in the garden every summer; now they’re really something special, like, er, Starlings and House Sparrows.
Meadow Grasshopper
The sandy heath paths were full of little holes dug by Ammophila Sand-Wasps, and others made by Philanthus Bee-Wolves (or Bee-Killer Wasps). Both are called digger wasps (“Sphecidae”) in most books, and it’s certainly a good name, but the family has been split up, so Philanthus is now in the Crabronidae, which contains most of the old “Sphecidae” (we’ll have to say sensu lato for this); the new Sphecidae (sensu stricto) only contains what used to be the Sphecinae, which includes Ammophila. Rich scope for confusion. Sphex is the ancient Greek word for wasp, and it’s interesting that Linnaeus chose this word for a digger wasp rather than the social wasps, which have the Latin name Vespa for the hornet, and Vespula, little wasp, for common wasps.
Bee-Wolf (Bee-Killer Wasp Philanthus triangulum)
Bee-Wolf carrying a bee into her burrow to provision her nest.
Sand-Wasp Ammophila pubescens. She too digs a burrow which she provisions with a caterpillar or two. The sand is dotted with angular lumps of iron pan.
Out of a low bush of willow and gorse right beside a boardwalk came a strange, quiet but insistent squawky chatter of alarm. Peering in between the branches, a small slim dark bird with a long dark tail could be seen hopping about anxiously: a Dartford Warbler. It was extraordinary to be within a few feet of this shy, rare and retiring bird, and watching it for several minutes. There are actually quite a few on the heaths of Surrey and the south coast, but they’re never easy to see—most of my views have been of disappearing rear ends, diving into gorse bushes.
Thursley Common on a sunny July day can shimmer with the wings of dragonflies. Today, hundreds of Keeled Skimmers, joined by plenty of other species large and small – from the mighty Emperor to the dainty Small Red Damsel, made the air seem to sparkle as brightly as the water beside the boardwalk. There were Keeled Skimmers perched alertly on stalks, ready to spring into the air at an instant’s notice; Keeled Skimmers in tussling pairs, their wings rustling and scuffling as they clashed in brief, brutal territorial disputes; Keeled Skimmers in groups of four or five, dashing and swerving over the water; Keeled Skimmers over every pond, bog pool, and lakeside.
Emperor Dragonfly patrolling its pond at waist height
Over one quieter pool, an Emperor Dragonfly patrolled in more stately fashion, almost hovering, drifting forward slowly as if a helicopter pilot was holding the machine’s collective drive stick just a little forward of the hover position, its striped blue tail gleaming in the sun.
Small Red Damselflies in cop over a bog pool at Thursley
A Four-Spotted Chaser, pausing momentarily over a sparkling pool
Many of the Odonata were busy laying eggs, from the Skimmers to the damselflies. One or two Black Darters were about: they can be here in large numbers later in the season.
Azure Damselfly pair egg-laying
On the sandy heath, the Sand-Wasp Ammophila sought her insect prey, her distinctive shape almost dragonfly-like with an extremely elongated red waist leading to a plump ‘tail’ to her abdomen.
Sand-Wasp Ammophila
Lizard on the boardwalk
Overhead, a Hobby dashed and stooped, handsome through binoculars, moustachioed, spotted below, its long scything wings like a giant Swift easily outpacing the fastest dragonfly. Below, a lizard rested unobtrusively at the edge of the boardwalk, ready to scuttle into the heather at any threat; another a yard further on. A Reed Bunting rasped out its short scratchy song, skreek, skreek, skrizzick. A Curlew called once; a Skylark soared invisibly high into the blue, singing as if John Keats were at hand to report on the beauty of its song.
Large Skipper on the rather special Cross-Leaved Heath
Four Wings Good, Eight Wings Better – Keeled Skimmers in cop
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
