Catty

This morning I drove up to RSPB Old Moor in South Yorkshire, where I'd arranged to meet Mr D. Pritchard, respected Odonatologist of that parish. After a ritual exchange of dragonfly exuviae in the car park, D showed me around the reserve, explained the work that's been done there over the past few years to encourage damselflies and dragonflies to thrive and multiply, and demonstrated some of the results. I had a great time chatting to him, and learned a lot.

These days I sometimes feel that we only hear bad news, and it was genuinely uplifting to see, just as one example, numerous willow trees marked with plastic ties to demonstrate that the branches carry Willow Emerald Damselfly oviposition scars, when only twenty years ago this was a rare immigrant species. Obviously climate change has a lot to do with the spread of dragonflies and damselflies northwards and westwards out of continental Europe into the UK, but Odonata species will only colonise a particular site if their own specific requirements are met, and it's clear that the authorities at at Old Moor are working to do that. This site is most widely known at the moment for its bird life, but as D says, that has to be underpinned by a healthy insect population, and the RSPB managers recognise the fact. Sadly for me, the reserve is a three hour drive from home - putting it outside the radius I think of as my normal beat - but I'd like to drop in at least occasionally over the next few years to see how things develop there.

It seems a little odd to go and visit an Odonatologist at a birding site and then post an image of a moth larva, but R and I are agreed that this is the most interesting of my photos from today. It's an early instar Puss Moth larva, which D spotted on an aspen sapling next to the path as we were pursuing Hairy Dragonflies across the reserve. Aspen, poplar and willow are the foodplants of this larva, which will only get more weird-looking with each moult until it's positively grotesque, before pupating into a dazzling, furry moth. If you're interested, you can read more about it in a well-illustrated Butterfly Conservation post here; I'm off to order some aspen saplings for the garden.