I did some events volunteering at Old Moor yesterday. I was helping out with the pond-dipping, and learnt almost as much as the kids did – it was great to see the mini-beasts that included pond skaters, water boatmen, diving beetles, saucer bugs, water scorpions, leeches and various larvae of damselflies, dragonflies, caddisflies and mayflies. Particularly interesting were the caddisfly larvae hiding in their self-made homes.
Plenty of dragonflies and damselflies around too, including emperor, common hawker, brown hawker, four-spotted chaser, common darter, ruddy darter, common blue damselfly and blue-tailed damselfly.
Ruddy Darter (not Common Darter as I’d originally labelled it).
Common Blue Damselflies mating (luckily none of the kids asked what they were doing!)
I didn’t get chance to do a lot of birding, with the only real notables a couple of green sandpipers and a green woodpecker overhead. A shame I wasn’t there on Friday – marsh harrier, little stint, little egret and wood sandpiper were all sighted!
