I needed to be in Stratford for a meeting this morning, but I had some time to spare, so I went to the river and walked along the north bank, exploring much further than I ever have before. I usually stop my Odonata investigations at the point where the fishing pegs start, maybe three hundred metres beyond Lucy’s Mill Bridge, but today I checked all the pegs, some of which give really good access to the water’s edge and its vegetation. Not that this will help me in the fishing season, when the bank is heavily used by anglers, but for the next couple of weeks I’ll be keeping an eye out along this stretch of river for damsels and emerging dragons.
Today there were Nodonata (©) of any description, the sky being dark and heavy, and a biting wind chill making things tough for any creature without its own central heating. There were plenty of birds though – Chiffchaffs and Sedge Warblers being the most obvious as they whizzed around collecting insects for their young, and zoomed back and forth across the river. A Cetti’s Warbler was yelling its head off nearby, trying to outdo a Wren in the decibels per gram stakes, then it suddenly dropped onto a branch a few feet away, allowing what for me is a relatively rare sighting, Photo though? Not a chance. At this point the gentle spitting that had been going on for a while began to organise itself into actual rain, so I headed back to town – noticing quite a lot of wittering emerging from a rape field near the bridge, which sounded to me like the contact chat of Skylarks. Whoever it is that’s nesting there, I hope they manage to get their offspring safely fledged and away before the field is harvested.
The forecast had promised that the weather would improve later in the day, and for a while it looked as though this might be going to happen, but by the time I got home it was clear that we were in for a bout of heavy rain, so I grabbed the camera and scuttled out in search of a photo. Wet flower, I thought, and there were certainly plenty to choose from, but the nearest photogenic one was this cottage garden peony in the top garden. I inherited it from my mother, who inherited it from my grandmother, so in all probability it’s older than me – though wearing its age quite a lot better. Sadly I’d elected to go out in garden shoes rather than getting back into my walking boots, and the ten minutes it took me to select an immortalise my subject was more than long enough for the rain to find and exploit their weak points: by the time I got back in the house, both feet were drenched.
R: L2, C9, D18.
