Nearly caught up! Day 13, a Monday and a wet one at that. I was leading a guided walk at Blashford in the morning and was a little concerned that we might struggle to see very much. I need not have worried, we started at the Centre with a quick look at the moths and then, as the school group were elsewhere, checked out the tanks and trays of creatures caught in the pond. Before we even got around to seeing any birds we had clocked up several dozen species and, thanks to the shelter, we had not even got wet.
As often seems to be the case the weather improved a bit later in the day and before going to lock up I checked out the sides of the Centre pond looking for dragon and damselflies. There were lots of newly emerged damselflies all around the pond edge with some stems having several exuviae showing how many had already emerged.
newly emerged damselfly
signs of a mass emergence
The masses of immobile soft-bodied insects attract predators and the local robin was having a feast. Even when they are able to fly they need to be wary about where they land as there are ambushes all over the place. I spotted this crab spider lurking on a hemlock water-dropwort flower head, when I first saw it she was just finishing off a common blue damselfly.
crab spider lurking
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 