Pleasant Surprise.

When work gave me the opportunity to take a half day off and savour the last of the fine weather I jumped at the chance. Having enjoyed the song of a Blackcap from my garden and seen a Peacock butterfly too I was ready to get ready and grab the bus down to Weldon.

Banded Demoiselle.

A walk alongside the stream produced a sighting of a female Banded Demoiselle, I'd been hoping to find one but didn't really expect to. After all this record was about a fortnight earlier than in any previous years and was no doubt due to the exceptionally good weather that we've had over Easter. Having taken several photographs I left her to herself and walked on. I then bumped into the county dragonfly recorder Mark Tyrrell who set off to look for my demoiselle.

Large Red Damselfly.

Carrying on along to the pond at the Woodland Park I walked along its edge hoping to see some Large Red Damselflies. Pleasingly I managed to find three though I had to rescue one from a spider's web. While I'd normally leave nature to do its thing I thought differently today and decided to save it from becoming a spider snack. After several minutes the damsel seemed to have cleared herself of web and flew off. Returning to the stream I saw that Mark had managed to catch up with the demoiselle before he had to scoot off back to work. Minutes later I found to my further surprise a male Banded Demoiselle though this one unlike the female did not pause for pics and chose instead to flit over the stream and into someone's garden.

Holly Blue and Peacock.

From here I wandered along to the A43 pond where at least twelve Tufted Ducks were still hanging around. I was able to find a few butterflies and my total list for Weldon was Comma 1, Peacock 1, Brimstone 2, Speckled Wood 3, Holly Blue 4 and a few Orange-tips. On the way home from Weldon I popped in briefly to my old patch near to Corby STW where butterflies were the order of the day with two Small Tortoiseshells, a Comma, four Speckled Woods, two Peacocks and an Orange-tip making up the numbers. Sorry for boring you with the figures but these posts also serve as my notes! Not a great deal else to report though a Whitethroat was singing near to the entrance.

Bee and bee-fly.