The Southern Hawkers in the wild garden were not cooperative this afternoon, disappearing into the cypress tree whenever I seemed to be paying them too much attention, and there wasn’t much else about, so I decided I’d need to go out in search of a subject. In hindsight this was my big mistake of the day, but while I was actually rummaging around the Community Orchard at Cleeve Prior I was quite happy and content. I’d decided that I didn’t need to record today, so all I had to do was find something nice and take its photo. This took away any element of pressure from the excursion, and I had plenty of butterflies and odonates to choose from.
As an aside, it’s strange that the little red dragon colloquially known as the Common Darter seems to be getting less and less common, at least in these parts. It always used to be the first Darter to emerge here, and was often the last dragon still flying in the autumn, while a smaller number of Ruddy Darters would fly alongside it in the middle part of its season. But these days the Ruddy tends to appear first and outnumber its bigger cousin, and I can find myself searching for quite a while before I spot the first Common Darter of the season. So far this year I haven’t seen a single one, but the Ruddies are out in force – at the Community Orchard today there were at least half a dozen of both sexes whizzing around my head.
This mature male was my favourite because he was perfectly relaxed about being photographed, allowing me to edge right round his favoured perch, on quite a narrow bank, to the side from which he was better lit. It was a warm afternoon and he was inclined to obelisk, as Darters do in hot weather to minimise the amount of sunlight falling on their bodies – though he never got close to the perpendicular, so he can’t have felt as overheated as I did. Even though I know perfectly well why they adopt this pose, and that dragons don’t do emotion, the obelisk always seems to me to have an element of joy about it: the dragon just looks happy. Watching him do it made me happy too, and I wish now that I’d got my phone out and filmed another little move he added whenever he’d been off catching flies, which was to land facing the sun, and then instantaneously swivel through 90° – so fast that I didn’t even see his feet move, as if he was rotating on an axle – before smoothly swinging his abdomen up into the air. He treated me to this lovely little dance move several times, and it was delightful to watch.
My day went awry when I got back home from Cleeve Prior. Coming down the single-track lane to our house, my neighbour two doors down was out in the middle of the lane with his work van, and the in-between neighbours were pulling out of their drive as well. Because of our relative positions and the width of the lane, none of them could go anywhere till I’d pulled in, so I really had no excuse for getting distracted and messing up the turn… but that’s what happened. There was an almighty crump as I hit the wooden gate post, and I proceeded into the yard trailing bits of plastic trim from the back passenger door. If anything the gatepost came off worst, but it’s the car that’s going to have to go to the bodywork people in Tewkesbury – probably for a replacement door – and we who’ll have to cover the insurers’ costs, no doubt, in increased premiums over the next few years. I have no-one to blame but myself, and I am NOT HAPPY.
R: L2, C10, D42.
