GARDEN DRAGONS

A small number of dragonflies have come into the Firs Chase garden recently to feed on the various insect life. This migrant hawker pictured above looks like a newly emerged male, was seen resting in the late afternoon sunshine on Sunday 4th. Although there is a small water feature in the garden, many of the dragonflies seen here probably breed in a nearby pond.

A few ruddy darters such as this female were also enjoying resting in a sheltered corner out of the breeze.

The little blue-tailed damselfly is the most widespread damselfly on the Island with one or two found in the garden.

The nasturtiums have taken a real hit from the masses of caterpillars of the large white caterpillars. The caterpillars seem everywhere, stripping all the leaves as they feed up. The lavender plants have been busy with bees and butterflies especially small whites and large whites. Up to ten peacocks have been on the buddleia while comma, small tortoiseshell, gatekeeper, holly blue and Essex skipper were also noted on Sunday 4th.

As darkness descended, up to 20 silver-Y moths were busy hovering amongst the lavender bush, a pine hawkmoth showed briefly and two pipistrelle bats were swooping over the garden.

At the country park a clouded yellow butterfly was reported by David Morris alongside the borrowdyke on Sunday 4th. There were 12 black-tailed godwits, 3 greylag geese and 8 teal on the pools in the fields, 4 little egrets and a grey heron in trees by the pond. Twenty swifts passed over the fields along with twenty sand martins and several swallows as did a yellow wagtail too. At the Point 25 little terns were noted in the Colne by Andy Field.