Over the weekend Oxfordshire’s newly revealed colony of Variable Damselfy has drawn the great and good of the local Odonata community to a nature reserve by the Thames in Abingdon. Yesterday Adam invited me to join him in locating 2015’s six-legged stars of our county “birding quiet season”. Since his preparation is always thorough I appreciated this would be a good opportunity to get to know that site, Barton Fields.

Today Adam had found out exactly where to look from our county odo recorder Steve Burch, and also Richard Lewington whose own interest shows the significance of this recent discovery by an Abingdon enthusiast. Armed with this information we found the insects straight away in an area of dense vegetation that was ankle deep in water. Compiling the last two Rn’S posts has brought home that I need to be much bolder in getting into odonata habitat, and today demonstrated that very well.

Variable Dameslfy

Diagnostic broken blue stripes on thorax and wine glass pattern near top of abdomen

“Are you looking at me?”

In total we saw 9 individuals which Adam assured me exceeds the previous day count for Oxon, though later in the day Wayne had more than 10. Good quantities of other blue damselflies were also present. It was noticeable how the dominant May species Azure Damselfy is suddenly dwarfed in numbers by Common Blue Damselfy that has a more vivid blue appearance in flight. There’s also been one record this year of White-legged Damselfy at Barton Fields, but despite searching we didn’t see any today.

Barton Fields

To me there is no such thing as a birding quiet season, just an insect high season. At present, weather allowing I am spoilt for choice of places to go and things to see. Watch this space!