Last week I posted an atypical blue-form female Azure Damselfly, and commented that even once she achieved fully mature colouration she wouldn’t look as blue as a male of the same species, because her coloured markings were less extensive. In proof of that, here is a male specimen which I found – or more accurately, tripped over – in our wild garden this afternoon. I was tracking a hoverfly around the flowers of a large clump of pendulous sedge by the wildlife pond, when a flash of blue snagged my peripheral vision, and further investigation revealed the damsel sitting much further down in the tangle of leaves. I had to move a couple to get all of him in shot, and in more normal circumstances he’d probably have taken umbrage about this and left, but it was cold out so he stayed where he was and allowed me to get my shots.
The identification pointers for a male Azure Damselfly are firstly the thoracic markings: a blue shoulder stripe that’s narrower than the black one below it, and a short black mark running into the block of blue below that; this mark is the identifier for all of the Coenagrion species, and is known as the Coenagrion spur. So far, so sensible. But then, we’re told that to distinguish the Azure male from other, rarer Coenagrions, we should think of a snooker player: the black marking on the S2 segment – the first fully visible section at the base of the abdomen, below the thorax – is said to resemble a glass of beer, while at the other end, the marking on S9 – that is, the one beyond the complete blue band – supposedly looks like a bow tie. Sometimes…. I just…. cannot fathom other human beings.
Moving swiftly on, I must just mention the soundtrack to which I was treated, while trying to photography my hoverfly and my damsel. Over the course of last winter I regularly heard a Tawny Owl hooting very close to the house, and I said to R several times, “Someone round here has a Tawny Owl in their garden, and I want to know who it is!” Well, guess what? Turns out that it’s us. More accurately, the neighbours behind us, whose garden would abut ours if there wasn’t a stream running between them, have an owl box in their garden, in which a pair of Tawnies has bred this spring, and they tell us that the adults like to keep watch on it from the fence or the trees on our side, and hunt across both gardens. They have a good view of all this activity from their house, which is only fair as they’re the people who put up the box, but our house is a hundred yards away with a screen of trees and bushes half way along it, so – frustratingly – we get to hear the owls far more than we see them. And – even more frustratingly – that was still the case this afternoon, when there was an owl(et) squawking above my head the entire time I was in the wild garden, but despite moving a couple of times to try to triangulate the sound, and searching the trees with my binoculars, I simply couldn’t find it. Just to be sure I wasn’t fooling myself I turned on the Merlin app, and it immediately flashed up Tawny Owl – but with a red mark against the name, indicating that this bird in this place would be unusual. “Hah!” I said to it grumpily. “Shows how much you know!” – then stuffed my phone in my pocket and headed back to the house, leaving the fledgling in peace.
R: L2, C9, D13.
