Some people have fairies living at the bottom of their gardens, allegedly. We have Beautiful Demoiselles, which I think is much nicer.
This morning when I came down for breakfast there was a Green Woodpecker digging the top lawn for ants. Green! I thought, and scuttled back upstairs for a camera. And if you look at my second photo, I think you’ll agree that he is quite green, as well as being strikingly handsome*. But what he isn’t is tiny, and with this being Tiny Tuesday, and me being at the helm of the challenge this month, it seemed a bit rude for me not to at least try to find a small green thing for today’s post.
Much of my morning was given over to desk work, but this afternoon R and I went for a walk in Stratford, where I was absolutely confident I’d find a female Banded Demoiselle. But the weather was starting to turn a bit stormy, and the Banded Demoiselles, not caring for these conditions, had exercised one of their superpowers and vanished, dropping deep into the reed and nettle beds to sit out the approaching rain. “Green Woodpecker it is, then,” I said to R, but once we were home I decided to have one last look around the garden, and then maybe wander over to the old village pond… just in case there was still something small and green to be found. Which is how I happened on the pair of Beautiful Demoiselles who were hunting flies in and out of the huge dogwood in the wild garden. The male was skittish, and quickly went off into the trees, but the female was very much calmer… as well as very much more green.
Five minutes after I took this the rain arrived, and by dinner time it was absolutely teeming down, but with a tiny green thing in the bag I felt fully entitled to spend the rest of the evening inside in the dry. There was more about RSPB Bempton Cliffs on this evening’s Springwatch, if you didn’t catch it, starting 12m 30s into the programme, and including a short vintage film of the old “climmers” who used to abseil down the cliffs on ropes to steal the seabirds’ eggs. The piece that followed this section was about Whirligig Beetles, and included some of the best wildlife film I think I’ve ever seen.
R: L2, C10, D19.
*If you weren’t aware, it’s the moustache mark of a Green Woodpecker that gives away its sex: the female’s is plain black, while the male’s has a red centre.
