Francis Hickenbottom's Nature Notes: 11th August, 2010.

Francis Hickenbottom’s Nature Notes.

11th August 2010

I paid another visit to Llandigige over the weekend and had a look at the damselflies and dragonflies on the irrigation pond.

There were hundreds of blue damselflies flying around just above the surface of the water. Many mated pairs were also flying over a part of the pond and were dipping down to the surface to deposit eggs, sometimes struggling to become airborne again.

I had another chance to try out the new moth trap in the days leading up to new moon, when skies were relatively dark and I added a few more species to my Llandigige species list. When I was last in Pembrokeshire, with school pupils, I found that the pupils were disappointed whenever we found a new moth species and they were then told that the species “is resident and common”. However, this week I caught one or two species which are more local in distribution than many other moths.

One species identified was pod lover, which has a distinctly coastal distribution and whose caterpillars feeds on, amongst other things, sea campion and sea spurrey..

A second and very distinctive species found was four-spotted footman. A single specimen was caught and this was a male, which does not have the spots which give the species its name. This species is found in the south-west and will not be turning up in the moth trap at home in Yorkshire.

Earlier in the year, four-spotted chasers could be seen at the pond but these have now been replaced by black-tailed skimmers. Several of these were active at one end of the pond in the bright sunshine. Each skimmer would take a brief flight over the water before returning to a favourite boulder at the water’s edge to sun itself. One skimmer sat still just long enough for me to use the binoculars and make sketches of it.

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