Flexible

Yesterday, despite the cold, one of the Worcestershire Odonata recorders found a newly emerged Common Clubtail on the river bank at Ripple. In fact the temperature seems to have played in his favour: unlike Southern Hawkers, Clubtails generally prefer to avoid humans, but this one was happy to sit on the recorder's hand, absorbing his body heat, while he photographed it for posterity. I cannot tell a lie - I was pretty envious of the find.

By this morning warm and sunny conditions had returned, and I felt certain that the pleasant weather would trigger more Clubtails into clambering out of the River Severn. All I had to do was find them. So off I went, staggering slightly beneath the weight of two cameras and my macro binoculars, but full of confidence that today would be Clubtail Friday.

From the fact that I'm posting a pair of Blue-tailed Damselflies this evening, I think you can probably guess how the day panned out.

I started at Severn Stoke, where the Banded and Beautiful Demoiselle count has gone up to around twenty individuals, but there were no dragons to be found, and not much of anything else either. Then, after swinging round to Croome for coffee, I went up to Ripple, where I walked the section of river bank north of the motorway - twice - before circuiting the northern lake and visiting both the dragonfly and fishing pools; but in all the (considerable) time that took I only saw a single dragon, and I didn't even get a good look at that. The one thing I could say for certain, as its pruiny blue abdomen flashed past me at shoulder height, was that it wasn't a Common Clubtail. Other things I failed to find at Ripple today included Beautiful Demoiselles and White-legged Damselflies, but at least I was able to record Banded Demoiselles, and Common Blue, Blue-tailed, Azure, and Red-eyed Damselflies. 

Driving home, a bit downcast, I reminded myself of the owlers' mantra: never mind - there's always tomorrow. But somehow that wasn't as comforting as it might be. Maybe I'll leave it a while before going looking for dragons again down on the Severn - if only to let my knees recover from all today's climbing, scrambling and sliding on and off fishing pegs - and do something else tomorrow.

Never mind - there are always butterflies...