I had to post this Migrant Hawker today, in flight over one of the reed beds at Lucy’s Mill in Stratford, because we’re soooo close to the end of the dragon season now that he might be the last of his kind I see this year. But in case you’re bored with Migrant Hawkers (what is wrong with you?) I’ve added a second photo – taken when I first arrived at the riverside, and thought the cool, overcast conditions were going to stop the last few remaining dragons coming out to play – of a Common Carder Bee, also in flight, against the sunflower on which it had been feeding.
There’s a field just north of the river and west of the Greenway, which is currently sown with a mixed green manure crop: yellow and white mustard, wild radish, flax, and sunflowers, and as you’d expect it’s a magnet for every pollen- and nectar-feeding insect in the area. Even last month, when the plants amounted to nothing more than low, scrubby ground cover, I spotted a Clouded Yellow among them, and today the expanse of flowers was hosting a range of butterflies, bees, wasps and flies, as well as some beetles and bugs. Out of them all the Common Carders were the most focused on feeding, and therefore the easiest to photograph, but that aside this is one of my favourite species of bumblebee, and I especially liked the way their colours toned with the sunflowers.
During Odonata season, where you have a mass of flying insects like this you can usually expect to find dragons hunting, and I was hopeful that I would – but in the event, when the sky lifted a little, the temperature went up, and the dragons came out, they were entirely focused on searching the area for potential partners rather than on feeding. They seemed so frantic, zooming from tree to tree and from one reed bed to another, that I wonder if they have some kind of internal clock, that warns them when they’re running out of time.
