Flying through the air!

Mummy was out all day on Friday! She stayed at work for a murder mystery evening. But I will let her off as she spent a lot of the time yesterday and today playing with me. She went for a walk along the canal by work and was very excited about the fact that she saw a few different butterfly species, at last (they do seem to be a bit sparse this year), including a Comma that nearly landed on her nose.

She also saw a Dragonfly. She gets very excited when these are on the wing. Apparently she couldn't identify it as it flew away out over the canal as soon as she spotted it. She also saw a Dragonfly yesterday when out by the seawall down at Goldcliffe. It was lovely out there as there was a bit of a breeze - but mummy got a little burnt on her chest :D. There were some large noisy white birds out on the mud flats that Gav Gav said could rival me for noise. I am not sure that they could. There were black headed gulls, lesser black backed gulls and another medium sized gull that mummy couldn't identify due to the distance. There were also Curlews and Shelducks (many Shelducks in fact).

We did manage to get a picture of the Dragonfly:

We think this is a female Ruddy Darter.

Did mummy ever tell you about the Dragonfly she rescued a couple of years ago. He was a really interesting little fella, and I got to watch him closely as he shared a room with me :)  He was a Southern Hawker male and he had emerged on my mummy's natural pond down at the allotment. This pond had a lot of pond weed - as fast as it was cleared it multiplied and it was difficult to get to that in the centre of the pond. This little guy had been noticed one evening on the stem of one of the reeds in the centre of the pond. Mummy didn't think much of it, although she was happy that she had seen him. However, when she went back down 2 evenings later and saw him still in the same place she got concerned. Mummy had not put the pond into the allotment but had acquired it when she rented the allotment, and so she had no idea how deep it was. However, she took her trainers and socks off and paddled (hoping not to stand on a newt in the process as there were Palmate Newts that lived in there) to the centre of the pond to retrieve the little guy.
When she got him home she noticed that he had pond weed stuck on his wings, which had stopped him from being bale to open them properly. She spent a good hour just trying to get the weed off the wings, but they were damaged beyond repair. The poor guy had no chance of flying, although he could leap to the floor flapping his wings. So mummy had to feed him fly's that got caught on the fly paper (pulling their wings off so tht there was no sticky stuff to get inside the dragonfly) and also Morio worms. It was so interesting to live with one of these guys - he was so friendly,a nd he covered his eyes whe he slept! Unfortunately he didn't last long, but mummy does still have him preserved.

Here are some photos from when he was with us:

 Sleeping

 Eating

 And just chilling

Hi there.

On another note - still on the topic of flying - mummy came in very excited this evening (and covered in mud!). She watered her little round balcony planter, and heard a buzzing. She frantically tried to take the plant out of the planter without ruining it to free whatever bee had been buried, and found some rolled up leaves, and eventually the leaf cutter bee that had placed them there!! WOW. No photos I am afraid though.

Thanks for popping along and having a read. I do enjoy bringing you my nature notes.

Chucky.