Takeover

Another day, another d... wait - what? 

You wait three years from the first appearance of a new damselfly in the county for it to turn up in your neck of the woods, and then find it at two different sites in three days. Admittedly, North Littleton and Cleeve Prior are probably less than a mile apart as the damsel flies (arf, arf), but today's discovery supports Sunday's, and improves the chance of the species becoming established in the east of the Shire.

In fact, I photographed Willow Emeralds on three of the seven ponds at Cleeve Prior Community Orchard this afternoon, whereas I only found the increasingly badly named Common Emerald Damselfly at one of them. Of the other four ponds, two are bone-dry, one appears virtually dry, and the final one has been so overrun by crassula that it looks like a sunken flower bed. I hope we have a wet autumn, because if we don't I fear that at least one of the dry ponds will be permanently lost.

After recording at the Community Orchard I swung down to the river at Cleeve Mill, in the hope that I might find some more Willow Emeralds there. This species favours still water bodies and slow-flowing streams and rivers, and the females lay their eggs into the young branches of trees - mainly, but not necessarily, willows - that overhang suitable water. I'm pretty confident that the Avon flows slowly enough past this point to gain the Willow Emerald's approval - there are quite large patches of water lily in the shallows, which suggests sluggish flow - and the bank has some impressive willows overhanging the river. There is also the old mill pond, lying a little way back from the river, which has willow trees too, though sadly it's so heavily enclosed by thick, tangled vegetation that it's currently inaccessible to humans. I circled it as best I could, examining the surrounding trees and scrub through my binoculars, and then repeated the exercise along the river bank, but without managing to find my quarry. I'm far from giving up on this search though, because Cleeve Mill already supports a good range of odonates, and I still feel that it ought to suit the Willow Emerald as well.