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 ThursleyA 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 AmmophilaLizard 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 HeathFour Wings Good, Eight Wings Better – Keeled Skimmers in cop
Heath landscape at Thursley with birch scrub, scattered pines
Thursley Common is one of those few, special places where the quiet visitor is almost guaranteed a beautiful experience of nature, at least if busy weekends are avoided. The area of a few hundred hectares offers several habitats, all acid: pine forest; dry sandy heath with heather, gorse and birch scrub, ideal for Whitethroats and Stonechats; acid bog with sphagnum, bog-cotton, marsh orchid, round-leaved sundew; bog pools buzzing with dragonflies; open water with teal and tufted duck.
Marsh Orchid, Round-Leaved Sundew at its foot, Thursley CommonDragonfly habitat: bog pools at Thursley; in the background, white of bog cotton, birch scrub and pine forest
Over the pools were half-a-dozen swallows in a loose flock, mostly flying high, keeping a wary eye out for hobbies. Two hobbies at least flew across the heath on their long grey wings, diving at speed to snatch dragonflies low over the water. A cuckoo called from the pines; another replied cuck-uck-oo from the other side; one flew hawklike across the heath, its wings remaining almost entirely below its body, an odd and very distinctive flight pattern.
Female Four-Spotted Chaser basking over a bog pool, Thursley
Four-Spotted Chasers have a distinctive jizz, being generally brown, flying fast, and indeed the males aggressively chase off rivals. Today there were several pairs mating in flight; unlike many other dragonflies, they do not settle to form a “wheel”, but soon separate, the female at once starting to lay eggs, darting down to the water to dab her abdomen repeatedly.
Large Red Damselfly, Pyrrhosoma nymphula male on heather at Thursley
Large Red Damselflies were hardly in evidence near the water, but were around in small numbers on the heather, or basking on the boardwalk. Nearby, a pair of Reed Buntings blundered in and out of the bushes, the male handsome with his black head and white collar, singing his slow brief song. A Goldcrest squeaked its unbelievably high notes from the tops of the pine trees. A Tree Pipit’s repetitive but slightly random riff rang out again and again from somewhere in the same trees; the species, still marked by the book as ‘abundant’ (that’s a 2 not a 1, however), ‘breeds locally’ in places like this.
Bog-Cotton, Molinia
It is always a pleasure, too, to see the fluffy white seed-heads of Bog-Cotton. The thin fibres are too brittle to spin, so our native ‘cotton’ remains a symbol of wild and lonely places, from the mountains of Snowdonia to the Pennines. It’s a reminder of just how extensive the heathlands of Southern England once were, Cobbett’s “rascally heaths” famously extending all the way from the Marlborough Downs to the fringes of London. His opinion, loudly voiced in his Rural Rides, was that these unimproved lands were wasted, a sign of lack of proper agriculture. The Dig for Victory! campaign in the Second World War caused many areas of marginal land to be ploughed up, including acid heaths, alkaline chalk grassland, and neutral flowery meadows: all were lost by the thousands of acres in a desperate attempt to increase Britain’s arable production. That led, of course, to the surplus production of the Common Market years, the destruction of farmland wildlife accelerated by grants to grub out hedges, while the use of pesticides of all kinds created marvellously clean crops that even that old badger of a critical farmer, Cobbett himself, would have heartily approved of. The one small problem was that the crops were so clean that there were no wild flowers to support the bees that used to pollinate the fruit trees, the clover, beans and alfalfa, the cabbages and turnips and oilseed rape, the potatoes and vegetables that feed the nation. The cereals themselves need no bees, their grass pollen blowing in the wind: but the rest of the crops are tied to a more balanced ecology. Thus I meditated, even as I enjoyed a nostalgic glimpse of Molinia, the Bog-Cotton; and so it is that delight in nature’s beauty is tinged with sadness at the mess we’re in.
Tiny yellow clubs of Bog Beacon fungus, Mitrula paludosa, by bog pool at Thursley
I was delighted to see the small but bright yellow Bog Beacon fungus. It appears as small clubs with white stalks, and it only grows on dead vegetation in acid bogs. Its specific name ‘paludosa’ means ‘of the marsh’. A single Broad-Bodied Chaser dragonfly scooted swiftly across a small pond.
Stonechat on fencepost of Hankley Common training area near Thursley
Stonechat males displayed atop gorse bushes or fence posts, or dived into the bushes for cover, appearing nearly all black from above, with a bold white flash on each wing. Several young ones perched lower down in the gorse, much browner and more streaky than their fathers. They are rather few and far between on the Common itself; more on the training ground just across the road at Hankley Common. Like Thursley Common, the land has remained wild because the army needed it for training; so the Second World War both destroyed much of the wildlife value of our farmland, and saved some places from the general destruction.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
