This Migrant Hawker was the best of a pretty bad job today, when I walked the whole perimeter of the artificial watercourse at Croome expecting an absolute dragonfest, and instead got… more than enough steps to keep Ōura happy. The main problem, I think, was that it was so windy that many of the odonates were staying low in the reed beds, and when they did come up to hunt they were swirling around in the gusty conditions. In the case of the Migrant Hawkers the hyper-alert males were also annoying each other quite a lot, and the combination of those factors meant that they did hardly any of the vigilant mid-air hovering for which they’re known and loved.
My already rather thinly-stretched, patience was quite sorely tested in the taking of this shot, because I’d finished what had been quite a long walk at the point where the lake meets the ‘river’, and the bridge on which I was standing bounces up and down whenever someone walks across it. Which rather a lot of people did, while I was standing, camera raised, and breathing quite carefully, waiting for them all to finish crossing and push off somewhere else. Though I did manage not to say that, when several of them in turn asked me what I was doing – so yay to the age of maturity and self-control.
R: L2, C11, D11.
