I went back to the Avon at Cleeve Prior Mill this afternoon, to count damselflies and see if anything else interesting had turned up. I’m happy to report that there are now a dozen or more Banded Demoiselles around the site, and I also found my first Blue-tailed Damselfly of the season – though he was extremely skittish, and disappeared at speed as soon as I pointed a camera at him. As well as the Odonata I saw numerous butterflies of various species, plenty of bugs and beetles, a few bees and hoverflies, and even a couple of Orthoptera nymphs I wasn’t fast enough to identify. There were quite a few birds around too, the showiest of which were two Blackcaps, who were working one of the willow trees in search of insects. This is a very small site, but some combination of factors – maybe its sunny, sheltered aspect and the close proximity of both water and woodland, and probably also the fact that (at least out of the fishing season) not many people go there – make it amazingly productive of wildlife.
Considering the number of photographic subjects I had to work with this afternoon, it’s perhaps surprising that most of the day’s “keepers” show this same female Banded Demoiselle. But while many of her relatives were at best reluctant models, she didn’t seem even slightly worried about what I might be up to, and continued to pose on this bramble shoot even when I reached the minimum focus distance of the 100-500 lens, and moved in closer still with the macro. Every so often she’d suddenly take off, and each time she did this I was sure that I’d finally pushed my luck too far, but it always turned out that she’d just been hunting: a couple of seconds later she’d reappear with a tiny smackerel of something in her jaws, and settle back on her favourite leaf to eat it.
When you’re offered this kind of cooperation, and your model has thoughtfully selected a perch away from the worst clutter of the bramble patch, and she’s bathed in the warmest of golden hour light… frankly, turning her down would be not just rude, but foolish.
R: L2, C8, D20.
