I had to go to Stratford Hospital today to have some blood drawn for tests my GP has ordered, and as the good weather has come back and it was a warm and sunny afternoon, R decided to come along too. After meeting up for coffee we walked down to the river and along the south bank, to the wild flower bed the Council has seeded along a section of the recreation ground.
Ten days ago I photographed an immature Scarce Chaser among the wild flowers and seed heads, and today I got this mature male in almost exactly the same spot. Clearly there’s no way of knowing if this was the same dragon, but he was being equally territorial, and seemed determined that this patch of ground belonged to him, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it was. As you can see from the scratches on his abdomen, he has mated – which means that he must have been to the river in search of a willing female at least once, and has now come back to hunt in this area, which is a couple of hundred metres from the water, because he knows he can find plenty of pollinator prey here.
He spent much of the time – when he wasn’t busy chasing off a second male – flying low over the flowers and grasses, and bouncing rapidly on and off them to put up tiny flies and other invertebrates. But Chasers are dragons that like to perch, and obligingly, almost every time he felt the need to rest he seemed to come down on this tall dandeliony plant (nipplewort, maybe?), which was perfectly placed for me to take his portrait.
R: L2, C10, D22.
