Today was blissfully peaceful after yesterday, though I still managed to get my heart pounding a few times.
Back on Tuesday when I walked around the lake at Croome with R and the Boy Wonder, I spotted a small mosaic hawker over the reeds in the channel surrounding the island. It didn’t pause, and was too quick for me to capture in flight, but because of its general size and colour I mentally logged it as a Migrant Hawker. We’ve been here before, though… so I felt far more chagrin than surprise, later in the day, when a message pinged up in the Worcestershire Odonutters’ WhatsApp group: the County Recorder had also seen that dragon, a couple of hours before I did, and identified it as a Southern Migrant Hawker.
Over the past two days other members of the group have been to Croome and looked for the same dragon, without success, and the consensus was that it had moved on. But I didn’t think so, mainly because while chatting with the Recorder about it over a series of emails, I suddenly remembered that ten days earlier, on the day when I found some Willow Emerald Damselflies at Croome, I’d also seen a small mosaic hawker at the island, but before I could even get the binoculars on it, it had grabbed a female and disappeared into the trees. “Now I’ll never know what that was,” I said crossly to R – but while that’s true, my instinct now is that in fact I do know: it was a pair of Southern Migrants. So this morning I decided that if there was a breeding pair at Croome for over a week before anyone else spotted them, there was no reason to assume that they’d have moved on in the couple of days since, and I might as well go and take a look.
Three very steamy hours scuttling around the island (occasionally taking shelter in the pavilion to sit and send an update to the Odonutters) got me shots of two males – both of which you can see here. I also had good views, though sadly not shots (due to overexcitement and incompetence) of the younger male seizing an incoming female and carrying her off in cop, and then returning with her in tandem about half an hour later. Southern Migrants will oviposit in tandem, but in this case it proved too difficult for the pair because the older male hassled them relentlessly every time they landed on the muddy surfaces where they prefer to lay their eggs. In the end the mated pair separated, and the male guarded the female from above while she laid the eggs deep in the bur-reed below him, flying furiously at anything that came close, including butterflies, Ruddy Darters, a Brown Hawker and even a small bird. My second photo shows the younger male in this guarding pose, hovering over the reed bed, and the header image shows the older one patrolling a section of channel where the bur-reed has recently been cleared. As you can see, his wings are a little ragged in places, but the real giveaway to his greater age is his darker colouring: as male Southern Migrants mature the blue of their eyes and mosaic spots darkens, and and the thoracic side panels also become increasingly blue.
Having failed to cover myself in glory in identifying Southern Migrants both at Woorgreens and previously here at Croome, I’m reassured that today has slightly restored my dragon-hunting reputation. Certainly the County Recorder and the other Odonutters are happy, and I’m sure there will be a regular stream of dragon-watchers heading to the lake at Croome over the weekend. As a bonus, my Ōura ring was so pleased with me for the high-speed yomp I did from the lake back to the house that I felt justified in buying an ice cream and sitting on a shady bench to savour it – pleasantly capping a rather satisfactory day.
R: L2, C10, D64.
