Scotch Argus at Smardale Gill 16th August 2024

Today we set off from our home in Oxfordshire to drive to Moffat which is just over the border in Scotland.The journey would take around six hours of now familiar, tedious and boring motorway driving .

On our regular journeys north we always stop at Tebay Services to break the journey and have a bite to eat. This time however I had something extra planned before resuming our journey.

The weather was sunny and at this time of year I knew from previous experience there was a good chance of finding Scotch Argus butterflies at Smardale Gill, only a thirty minute drive east of Tebay.

After lunch we took a long straight road that runs into the fells and following the satnav's instructions soon found ourselves, after a few twists and turns in the pleasant little village of Smardale and the Cumbria Wildlife Trust's discrete car park.

The 49 hectare reserve, now a NNR (National Nature Reserve) and SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) is based along a former railway line that ran from Tebay to Darlington, carrying iron ore to the steel foundries in Barrow and West Cumberland. The line was built in 1862  and follows the route of the Scandal Beck which runs at the bottom of a steep and narrow valley to eventually be spanned  by a spectacular viaduct which carried the railway 90 feet above the beck.The line closed in 1962 and after the usual procrastinations about the cost of preserving and maintaining the viaduct, it subsequently survived with funding from various bodies. 

The reserve first came into being in 1978 when the land was acquired by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust and encompasses the former railway line which is now converted into an  all weather footpath for the use of visitors to the reserve and passes through a mixture of ancient woodland and limestone grassland, running for 1.5 miles from Smardale to the viaduct.

We passed through a gate and walked up onto the top of the embankment where the former railway used to run and followed the footpath through, at first woodland with the embankments dropping away steeply on either side. Soon the footpath was flanked to the left by a rising bank but still with a very steep drop to the beck far below on our right.

A mixture of rank grass and various flowers and bushes grew on the bank to our left and trees such as mountain ash to our right through which the beck could still be viewed and heard below. This was where the Scotch Argus were to be found on my previous two visits.

It took some while to locate a Scotch Argus this time and when we did it was a faded and very tatty specimen clinging for all its worth in a fairly strong wind to the purple blue head of a Devil's bit Scabious. I speculated that maybe we were too late and most of the argus we sought were over. We walked further and eventually came to another 'hot spot' that I recalled from a previous visit that contained a good area of scabious although the butterfly's larval foodplant is purple moor grass. At first this area appeared devoid of any argus but on looking further up the bank a distinctive dark chocolate brown butterfly fluttered and then was followed by two more. A quick check through my bins revealed the dark brown wings possessed  lovely orange bands encompassing black eyespots with white pupils. Scotch Argus! These were in a much more healthy looking condition than the first one we had found.

Even better they descended the bank to rest, open winged on leaves right by the side of the footpath.They really are a gorgeous looking butterfly. Coloured rich chocolate brown that looks almost black when they are newly hatched, the overall uniform colouration  on the open wings only disrupted by the distinctive orange bands

As their name would suggest they are reasonably well distributed in Scotland but are now found in only two locations in England, Arnside Knott and Smardale Gill, both in Cumbria.

The intermittent sunny spells and strong wind were obvious factors in persuading them to limit their flying and to bask on the leaves in order to gain some warmth which  worked in our favour as they were more inclined to remain where they settled.

We carried on heading for the viaduct and found a few more fluttering intermittently amongst the grass but nowhere near the hundreds, that I found with my colleague Peter a few years ago but then that day had been hot, still and very sunnysee here

We met another local butterfly enthusiast and commiserated with him about what an awful year it had been for butterflies and insects in general.He confirmed that the Scotch Argus here had been very much down in numbers this year but nonetheless I was content with what we had seen so far.

We arrived at the viaduct which although not our primary interest is well worth seeing. It is set in the most glorious  countryside, wild and rugged, very much how someone living in the more gentle Oxfordshire Cotswolds might imagine the fells to be. The viaduct was built in 1861 and consists of fourteen arches rising high above the valley floor along which the Scandal Beck continues its course. 

The designer was one Thomas Bouch, he who later designed the Tay Bridge which due to faults in the design disastrously collapsed on the night of the 28th December 1879 in a huge storm, resulting in an entire train and its passengers that was crossing at the time, being lost into the River Tay along with the disintegrating girders of the bridge.

Thankfully Smardale Viaduct has survived although it is now in need of almost constant maintenance to preserve it so it can continue to be part of the footpath.

We stopped here, although you can follow the footpath over the viaduct and carry on into the fells on the other side.While Mrs U took advantage of a bench to rest. I crossed a stile and followed a track which dropped down beside the viaduct and found several more argus here. In all I estimate between us we saw around thirty Scotch Argus.

Time was now pressing so we turned to walk the one and half miles back to the car.

Inevitably various stops were required on the way back to view the argus, as who knows when either of us would pass this way again. On one of these interregnums  I noticed to my immense pleasure a Broad-leaved Helleborine growing amongst the herbage on the bankside and looking more carefully we found another three close by. This for me was equally rewarding as finding the Scotch Argus.

Broad-leaved Helleborine

Our visit lasted less than ninety minutes but the pleasure of walking in the fresh air, on a pleasant day in uplifting scenery, away from the noise and turmoil of the motorway was just the tonic we required and we headed north revitalised.

Hairstreaking 12th August 2024

The noun zephyr means a soft gentle breeze, the word originating from Zephyrus the Greek goddess of the west wind and this early morning the presence of a zephyr was very welcome to alleviate what was presaging to be the hottest day of the year.

I had but one thing on my mind and that was to visit the RSPB's Otmoor reserve, a cross county drive of forty five minutes through rural back roads. My objective was to try and find a Brown Hairstreak, a tiny butterfly possessed, as all our five native hairstreak species are, of infinite charm and beauty and when found, which is no easy task,  brings a very personal sense of elation and achievement. Today would be ideal as this butterfly worships both sun and heat.

At the end of a long narrow lane leading to the reserve entrance there continues a narrow bridleway known as The Roman Road, which whether in fact the Romans were involved, is indisputably straight and very ancient.

It may have been a highway in Roman times and possibly much wider then but now is almost subsumed by the unruly rampaging of high summer vegetation that surges upwards on either side of its indeterminate course Head high white umbels of wild angelica and the pink flowers of giant willowherb grow in random outbreaks of profusion  backed by larger hawthorns, blackthorn bushes and sallows, up which scramble giant bindweed and bramble, clawing their way skywards, forming an impenetrable natural wall of flower and thorn. Drifts of thistledown take an erratic course down the bridleway, blown at the will of the warm breeze.

At just after nine in the morning it is shaded here until the sun rises further overhead, almost claustrophobic as the burgeoning vegetation leans inwards, brushing me as  I pass along the narrower stretches. About a third of the way along there is a particular area, slightly more open, a recess of grass where I usually stand, the sun reaching here before anywhere else.

Now it is a waiting game.Patience the watchword but really no hardship.There is plenty to see if, as is usual, the elusive hairstreaks are not in evidence, for they are late risers and rarely appear before ten of a morning. 

Gatekeeper  butterflies tumble down from the top of the hedge to flirt their bright eyed wings as they reconnoitre the brambles at my feet.  Ruddy and Common Darters, small abundant dragonflies, are still in thrall to the lethargy that will only leave them as they absorb the warmth of the sun. Hoverflies hold position before me as if curious about my presence before darting away to busy themselves in the white  flower froths of angelica or wild carrot. Outbreaks of fleabane, bright yellow of flower and green of leaf form a counterpoint to the spent greens and fading whites that now herald summer's slow decline.

I am early for the hairstreaks.I always am, a legacy of a former sales career when it would be a minor disaster to be late for an appointment. There is however now time to stand and piece together my thoughts.

The rising sun is becoming noticeably hot upon the back of my neck which is not unpleasant but to remain as such for longer would not be wise.I move a few feet to my right to a rapidly diminishing patch of shade. I stand still and contemplative, unwilling to move in the soporific heat.So still am I a Willow Warbler loses any discretion and clings to the stalks of a close by angelica, dabbing off mites from the ribbed stems. Eventually it discerns my human form and with a wistful note of mild alarm disappears into the mystery of the surrounding foliage.

A Raven unseen but betrayed by its harsh calls passes by, absent from the sliver of sky that is all that is visible to me from my cloistered path. I can follow its unseen progress by the calls moving ever further away.

An hour has passed with not a sign of a hairstreak. It is ten thirty.Maybe this is not to be the day.The heat is considerable, almost unbearable for no breeze now penetrates the narrow confines of the bridleway where I stand.

Doubts begin to erode my confidence or whatever confidence I commenced with.There is always an optimism on first arriving that slowly dissolves in correlation with the increasing amount of time I spend contemplating the possibility of failure. It is of no great portent as I re-assure myself that there is always another day but the challenge is here and now and it would be nice to see this lovely little insect.

I have encountered no one.Nobody has ventured into my secret place although it is well known to fellow butterfly enthusiasts and a public bridleway.Maybe because it is a Monday many have work to go to. I am grateful whatever the cause.

I feel my years, tiring and perspiring, standing in the oppressive heat and set a time to depart. I will give it another fifteen minutes and then walk to the end of the bridleway and explore the reserve. I am reluctant to leave, my personality fits this closeted environment rather than the open expanses of the larger parts of the reserve.It will also be even hotter away from the shelter of the trees and bushes that currently surround me.

The self imposed deadline arrives and I  commence walking down the bridleway. Thirty metres or so on my left is a tall stand of angelica and wild carrot and below a supporting profusion  of lower growing fleabane. I have already looked at the angelica and wild carrot many times this morning and found nothing.

One last passing glance does not appear to be any different but then on a flower head I discern the smallest brown triangle of folded wings.

If at the moment of my passing the butterfly had faced me, so minute and narrow are its wings it would have been nigh on invisible but seen side on it was revealed, the closed wings replicating a small yacht  sailing a tumultuous sea of white that is the flower's  head.

There comes no whoop of joy from me but an indefinable sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, tempered by the fact that it required such a long wait and let's face it sheer chance. But how the result is achieved is a matter of semantics and I feel no less satisfied.

I focused the camera on the butterfly and it promptly flew, irritated by a clumsy bee bumbling over its floral domain. A moment of intense anxiety came as the butterfly jinked heart stoppingly around in the warm air.This might bring disaster, for the hairstreak could well ascend to the higher trees, out of view and camera range. .

To my immense relief it instead dropped lower onto a fleabane leaf and wandered around, its proboscis sampling the  leaf's surface for aphid shit, gentrified into a more acceptable description as honeydew. In the process of its wandering it partially opened its wings to reveal a splash of orange on the corner of each upperwing.This identified it as a female. It was pristine, sheer perfection and possibly had hatched this very morning, so was unmarked by tears to the wings which are often the consequence of egg laying visits to the blackthorn which is the larvae's foodplant.

Dis-satisfied with the leaf it transferred to a flower. A gold centred  disc of yellow on which it minutely and thoroughly examined every miniscule floret. The magnification of my lens revealed the two thread thin antennae as they moved independently, rising and lowering to the butterfly's whim, guiding the insect across the flower. Each antenna was tipped with a tiny touch pad of sensory cells that would tell the butterfly all it needed to know,  Used to eyes that are round, the equivalent that I saw on the hairstreak were unfamiliar and unsettling, black and compound, each a thin oval pointed at each extremity. I  pondered whether this could be the origin of my childhood's comic space fiction illustrations of supposed alien forms. 

When nectaring like this hairstreaks are virtually immovable, stubborn in silent concentration and single mindedness of purpose and any insect with the temerity to come too close and attempting to encroach on the feast, is summarily dismissed with an irritable flick of wings. Bees, flies even other butterflies are given short shrift. A study in concentration the hairstreak covered the whole flower head, leaving no part untouched or unexamined as it extracted the energising nectar. Each drop of nectar must be infinitesimally small as it takes a good fifteen to twenty minutes for the hairstreak to satisfy itself on just one flower head.

I left it still feeding and went on my way.

The last hairstreak of the year and to my mnd the best of them.

In the Pink 7th August 2024

Last night I called Peter about going to see some Violet Helleborines growing in a beech wood in The Chilterns.I would be passing close to his home and I thought he would be keen to join me as three of the helleborines, there were seven in total, were of the very rare form Epipactus purpurata Var. rosea. This plant has no chlorophyll and consequently is rather beautiful and strange, the entire plant including the leaves and stem being a pale shade of rose pink with whiter flowers. As it has no chlorophyll the helleborine has to rely for its survival on mycorrhizal fungi found below the ground and on which its roots feed in a symbiotic relationship.

The Violet Helleborine nowadays is a rare and local plant in southern England so the opportunity to go and see an even rarer rosea example was pretty much irresistible to both of us.

There was no hurry as, unlike twitching a rare bird, the helleborines would not fly away or disappear overnight and would be guaranteed to be in place when we arrived to view them. Consequently I made a relaxed drive across a mild but grey and windy central Oxfordshire to collect my fellow orchid enthusiast at 10am.

A forty five minute drive took us from Oxfordshire into Buckinghamshire and eventually to a small layby between two villages where we could leave the car and take to a wide track, walking gently up into a very pleasing countryside of rolling hills and undulations that comprised this area of The Chilterns.

The walk to the helleborines took us through an area that looked to be under some form of country stewardship with fields full of wild flowers, notably a sea of wild carrot and a supporting cast of sky blue scabious, purple knapweed, sweet smelling marjoram, yellow catsears and ragwort amongst others.

The track wound its way uphill, eventually taking us into  mature beech woodland at the top of one of the gently contoured hills, the huge trees with  smooth trunks, elephant skin grey, towering above us, the  green canopy creating a cavern in which we stood in partial gloom whilst at our feet lay the deep and brown litter of previous year's fallen beech leaves and mast.

I had a precise location for the helleborines courtesy of a wonderful invention called What Three Words that would guide us to within a three metre square of where the helleborines were to be found.

On our walk we remarked on the almost complete absence of butterflies or any obvious insect life.It has been a disastrous year for insects and I felt a distinct sense of foreboding about the way nature is on the retreat in Britain - said to be the most nature depleted country in Europe.

We walked slowly forward under the beech trees until my app told me we had reached the right spot. At first we could not see our prize but after a minute Peter found the helleborines. There were four of the normal kind and three of the rosea variety, all seven clustered together but your eye was drawn immediately to the three spikes of the pale almost luminescent rosea, leaning towards the light at the edge of the wood.

The two varieties of Violet Helleborine

Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata Var rosea

I found myself wondering how we could have not seen them immediately but they were so close to the track, we had been expecting them to be far less obvious and consequently were looking further out towards the woodland edge. Hopefully their 'invisibility in plain sight' will allow them to survive without untoward disturbance, which thankfully it has up to now.

An involuntary gasp heralded my first sight of them so startlingly ghostly and alien looking were they on the dull palette of the woodland floor.

To protect them they had been encircled with fallen branches and twigs to keep off nibbling deer and any chance of being trod on. Carefully we parted the protective branches and took our photos. Treating these plants with great tenderness and affording them due reverence.

We were entirely alone in the wood and saw no one else which for both of us enhanced the experience as we paid our respects to these helleborines, standing in mute and fragile beauty within the wood. 

A 'normal' Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata

Violet Helleborine Epipactus purpurata Var. rosea

Violet Helleborines Epipactus pupurata and Var. rosea

After paying our respects to the helleborines we carefully replaced their protective corral of twigs and branches and took a casual wander around the environs of the wood looking for any other hidden delights, ultimately finding a lone Broad leaved Helleborine towards the edge of the wood.

More than satisfied we took our leave of this part of The Chilterns and now headed back towards Oxfordshire and Aston Rowant NNR in particular, which is further northwest in The Chilterns, encompassing parts of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

This time we were going to look for Chiltern Gentians, another rare plant confined in Britain to, yes you guessed it, The Chilterns and mainly found in Buckinghamshire. Aston Rowant NNR is one of the few places where the Chiltern Gentian can be found in Oxfordshire which makes it a very rare plant in the county. Elsewhere in Europe it is relatively widespread.

Fortunately we both knew precisely where to go at Aston Rowant and made our way to a western facing chalk downland slope that looks out over the Vale of Oxfordshire. I confess to having a great  affection for this place. For me it has it all. Chalk downland full of flowers and insects and a benign loneliness which always takes my mind to a lovely poem by Thomas Arnold called The Scholar Gypsy (based on a legend about a scholar who forsook Oxford University to forever roam the surrounding hills) and that was put to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams. On hearing the words and music it still raises the hairs on my neck, so relevant is it to this particular part of Aston Rowant.

I digress. So back to the matter in hand. 

We walked to the furthest end of the steep slope and set about searching for Chiltern Gentians. It is not as easy as it sounds for there are also the commoner Autumn Gentians here, both gentians flowering at the same time, growing together, looking very similar and prone to hybridise. To secure a definite identification  requires getting down on hands and knees and examining the flowers as this is where one can find the main distinguishing features, which in the case of the Chiltern Gentian are delicate fine white stamens forming a circle inside the flower and a wrinkly pattern to the outside of the tube formed by the sepals.

A Chiltern Gentian showing the fine white stamens and wrinkled sepal tube that
encases each flower

Considered one of the prettiest of their kind, Chiltern Gentians can grow between 5-20cms tall with purple violet, trumpet shaped flowers thrust upwards  the unopened buds like ladies lipsticks, with dark green leaves, all in a cluster fuster at the top of a reddish stem. Individual plants were scattered randomly and widely over the sward appearing as dark spikes of varying height amongst the wind waving downland grasses. The Chiltern Gentian is a biennial which can mean that one year they will be numerous and the next year not so.Judging by the number present today this is a good year.

The strong wind blowing from the southwest made the exposed slope a tad uncomfortable until a sunny spell would arrive to warm the slope but it did not take long for both of us individually to find a number of Chiltern Gentians.

Chiltern Gentian

From a beautiful and scenic location we now moved to the opposite, driving into Oxford in heavy traffic and parking in a suburban service road before making our way to a hidden gem of a reserve tucked away amongst houses and hospitals. 

I am of course writing about The Lye Valley Nature Reserve, a narrow strip of botanical and ecological wonder, comprising a very rare and ancient fenland habitat that has been preserved against all odds, is owned by Oxford City Council, located almost in the heart of a busy city, and is lovingly tended by volunteers from the Friends of Lye Valley Nature Reserve. It is a designated SSSI and contains twenty plants that are rare in Oxfordshire, fourteen of which  are endangered and on the England Red List.

Our visit was to specifically view one of these plants called, rather wonderfully and exotically Grass of Parnassus which flowers here at this time of year in some profusion on the wetter parts of the reserve. The name derives from Ancient Greece when cattle on Mount Parnassus were partial to eating it and hence it was an 'honorary grass' although it is more closely related to saxifrages. Now very much less widespread in Britain than in times past due to continual draining of wetlands it is mainly found in Scotland and northern England where damp pastures, boggy moors and marshes remain.The last specimens I saw were by a burn at Caithness in the far north of Scotland many years ago.

There are however still a few localised areas in southern Britain where it can be found such as the Norfolk Broads and fens and The Lye Valley, being a wet fen, is also still favoured by its presence.

Grass of Parnassus

At first it was hard to locate them amongst the profusion of other 'white flowers' such as Wild Carrot, Parsley Water Dropwort and Wild Angelica but soon the ivory white, chalice shaped flowers of the Grass of Parnassus, their petals delicately veined with translucent green stripes, were picked out amongst the vegetation. As we looked more and more became apparent, each flower or globe like bud held on a long green stem, the plants  stretching across and up the bank from the boardwalk on which we stood.

We took our photos and what I think is an Oak Bush Cricket photo bombed the flower on which I was focusing my camera but I took no offence.

It was a fitting end to what was for me an immensely rewarding and enjoyable day looking at some of the remaining natural diversity that is still there for all to see in our land.

Scarlet Darters in Dorset 31st July 2024

On a day promising sultry heat and sunshine I decided to make a long car journey to Dorset to see a very rare dragonfly - a Scarlet Darter which is normally and commonly found in southern Europe and throughout Africa.

The first to be recorded in Britain was at Kimbro Pool. on The Lizard, Cornwall on the 7th of August 1995 and subsequently just a very few have been recorded since in various places in Britain.Presumably global warming has had some influence on this expansion northwards.

Over the last week, an unprecedented four to six of this attractive dragonfly have been seen and photographed flying and occasionally settling over and around the shores of a small lake at Knighton Nature Reserve near a place called Crossways which is but a few miles from Dorchester.

I took my time setting off for the reserve knowing the dragonflies would not be active first thing in the morning but would require the sun to provide an optimum level of temperature to stimulate them into activity.I left home at around 8.00am  with an expected arrival at 1030, which for dragonfly viewing would be ideal. The drive on mostly motorways and being on a weekday was predictably taxing with many vehicles ensuring the roads were crowded and busy.

The outside temperature rapidly warmed as I headed south and halfway into my journey I was already resorting to the car's air conditioning to keep the temperature bearable while I drove.

Eventually I turned onto quieter roads which led me to the unprepossessing entrance to the reserve's car park, a wide expanse of unsurfaced flattened earth but refreshingly free of any parking restrictions or fees.

Stepping out of the car the heat immediately confronted me, bringing a hot caress to my face while the sunlight, bright and searing, caused my eyes to involuntarily narrow.

In anticipation of having to wade in water I donned wellingtons, the clumsy footwear feeling hot and sweaty on my legs but otherwise remained in shorts and tee shirt.

A short walk following a narrow passage through gorse and ferns on the other side of the road brought me to a shallow lake where one could walk down to the edge and follow an ill defined track around its marshy circumference.

Half a dozen enthusiasts were already standing sentinel at various points looking out over the lake but it was obvious no one was looking with that intensity and concentration of purpose which would indicate they had a Scarlet Darter under observation.

It takes me a little while to acclimatise to an area that one has not visited before. I like to stand and put the long journey to the back of my mind and then allow my surroundings to insinuate their unique ambience into my sense of being and, once accomplished then set about the process of looking for the purpose of my visit, in this case Scarlet Darters.

The lake was literally teeming with dragonflies and damselflies, a veritable mecca of odonata with hordes of various species cruising rapidly and randomly across and alongside the lake. Black tailed and Keeled Skimmers, Common Darters, Common and Red eyed Damselflies  were everywhere you looked as much rarer dragonflies such as a Lesser Emperor and a fabulous blue Southern Migrant Hawker  came and went.

From the largest Emperor Dragonfly to the smallest Blue tailed Damselfly, they were all here in abundance. Probably the most prolific were the Black tailed Skimmers, many of them mating while Emperor females were audibly rattling their stiff wings against the thin spikes of rush as they bent long green bodies to deposit their eggs in the shallows. 

Looking out at the teeming rush of dragonflies, cruising and dashing about over the lake with such vibrancy there came a brief poignancy as unlike myself there is no time for such insects to enjoy and rejoice in life, as if they could anyway, for as soon as the adults emerge they mate and lay eggs and die all in a matter of days.

It took about twenty minutes after I arrived before a Scarlet Darter was located, settled on a patch of sun burnt grass with a cluster of admirers gathered around it.They beckoned to the rest of us but being some way distant, by the time I got to them, which was only a matter of some seconds, to my immense disappointment it promptly flew off. This was to prove an all too familiar occurrence for the following hour.

Frustrated I walked further around the lake to stand in some welcome shade, the heat of the sun now having settled like a soporific shroud on the land. Not a breath of wind came to alleviate the steadily rising temperature.

Various of my fellow dragonistas were finding Scarlet Darters flying over the lake at random points but one corner of the lake in particular seemed to be favoured more than any other.

Slowly we cottoned on to the fact that the best way of pinning down these elusive insects was to follow them in flight over the lake and hope they would eventually settle somewhere on the shore. Occasionally it worked and at other times it did not.

Various Scarlet Darter 'touch downs' came and went but frustratingly the insect would not remain long before flying off again.It had nothing to do with us getting too close but more with the capricious insect never being content to remain still for more than a  minute at the most, often less. A sudden breath of breeze that shook its perch or the unwelcome attention of another insect or dragonfly would, without fail send it back into the air.

I grew a little dispirited as it became a repeated  'so near yet so far' situation in getting to photo a settled darter. I either had a few seconds at most to get in position to photograph it or it flew before I could focus the camera. A new excitment came as a pair were seen briefly clasped together over the lake and then a female began ovipositing in the lake. Hopefully this will ensure future generations of Scarlet Darters will grow to maturity in the lake and delight visitors in the years to come.

I soon lost sight of the egg laying darter in the dazzle of sunlight.In quieter moments in conversation with other enthusiasts we reckoned we had seen at least three males and one female.

For over an hour or more it was a case of getting close at regular intervals and just occasionally managing to get an image or two but it was hard  work, stressful and more difficult than I had imagined it to be.

Such a colourful insect proved  surprisingly hard to discern on the ground. Relatively small it would be an indistinct darker red outline amongst a myriad of paler dead grass stalks. The ultimate was to get it clinging to a thin spike of reed or dead grass stem. This only happened infrequently but fortuitously I managed to record it when it did.

Approaching noon the heat of the day had become decidedly uncomfortable and I sought relief of sorts by taking shelter in a tree shaded corner by the sun baked track that ran around the lake's edge.I stood enjoying this temporary respite and looked out across the lake more in hope than any expectation of picking up a Scarlet Darter flying around.

Two other enthusiasts were standing to my left, twenty or so metres away and commenced pointing cameras firmly at the track in front of them.This could mean only one thing they had a darter in view and by the looks of it perched on or near to the ground. Ideal.

I made a slow and cautious approach by means of a wide detour around them so as not to flush the dragonfly.Now with the sun behind me I had to first locate it, which after an anxious few seconds I duly did. It was perched with its back to the sun and had raised its body up at an angle. 

Two hours had elapsed since my arrival and now at last a Scarlet Darter was remaining where it had settled a few inches from the ground. It was typically restless but on taking to the wing, on  each occasion did not disappear but returned faithfully every time to its original perch. Four of us took as many images as we wanted as it held its position.It must have been there for at least ten minutes, an eternity of inactivity as far as a Scarlet Darter is concerned.

I had the time to admire its rich scarlet colouring, from head to the very tip of its curiously flattened body.The base of its lower wings were suffused with orange. The stiff gossamer wings covered  by a fretwork of black lines. It twisted its red head, held rigid on a short column from its thorax, to regard something with its huge compound eyes, a slightly unnerving action, performed with a peculiar jerky mechanical like movement before resuming its normal posture.

Seen so close in the camera it was an alien looking creature, a relic from pre-history that over all the millennia has never progressed to achieve any evolutionary refinement to its appearance.

It flew once more but this time there was to be no return. It was gone and with that came an acceptance by most of us that it too was time to depart, content with having seen one or more Scarlet Darters so well.  

There was however one more unexpected treat in store for me. Some years ago I found a female Wasp Spider, which are very strikingly patterned, at Radley in my home county of Oxfordshire and which gave me immense pleasure. Another was there the next year but then I never saw one there again, much to my disappointment.

A chance conversation with one of my fellow dragonfly enthusiasts by the lake elicited the fact that the spiders were relatively common around the lake and in fact so abundant there were concerns their predation on damselflies was getting out of hand. 

A Wasp Spider with its prey - a Common Blue Damselfly

It took me but a few minutes to find my first Wasp Spider and then subsequently another eight! 

If I could have summoned the mental and physical energy to search more thoroughly I am certain I would have found many more spiders.

I made the most of  admiring this attractively coloured spider and can only think that it is more prolific here than in Oxfordshire due to Dorset being so much further south and west. Wasp Spiders are a Mediterranean species that first colonised Britain in 1922, on  the south coast at Rye in East Sussex and are gradually spreading northwards.

So rejoicing at another successful mission I made my weary way back to the car, my wellington boots like lead weights around my feet. The car, having sat in the sun for hours was, on opening the doors an oven on wheels. 

Never was I so glad of a car with the luxury of air conditioning.