It was Banded Demoiselle Day at the river in Stratford – there were scores and scores of them fluttering around the reeds and rushes by Lucy’s Mill Bridge, and interestingly, given that I’ve had some immature Beautiful Demoiselles in the garden recently, some were still fresh enough to have soft, reflective wings. They were all very busy, though a few of them still gave me quite good photo opportunities, but instead of a demoiselle I’ve gone with this female White-legged Damselfly, posing on a corncockle bud among the wild flowers on the recreation ground.
The dead bloom in the background here is a bit of a problem, but I like the bud, and the fact that the damselfly is dusted with pollen – the word “pollinator” doesn’t immediately conjure the image of an odonate, but I guess they’re as capable as any other creature of picking up pollen and transferring it from one plant to another. Having seen more damsels at Lucy’s Mill than you could shake a stick at, I was surprised to find just two White-legged Damselflies at the wild flowers, but I soon realised that the explanation was an immature Brown Hawker, which was cruising back and forth above the strip of flowers and picking off some of the smaller pollinators. The two White-legs were keeping a pretty low profile though, and with luck the Hawker won’t have spotted them.
R: L2, C10, D39.
