Not giving up without a fight.

I think I may have spoken too soon last week, there was I casting the summer into the distance when in  reality it was right there all around me still giving its all.

Friday saw me doing dragonflies in beautiful sunlight, who'd have thought that eh? It was a good week really I intended to do a bit of birding but having looked at my garden visitors I don't think they are quite ready yet. I have a bald headed Blackbird that comes to my garden so I stuck to the bugs. Funnily enough they seemed to want to make it easy for me with no less than 3 shield bugs being found in or around my house. unfortunately two were dead, I am confident that one of them was a Birch shield bug, and the other a Forest shield bug. Roxy found the living bug in my lounge, that too was a Forest Bug.

in adult stage.

I found Hawthorn shield bug in various stages. From a very early stage,

Right up to adult stage.

Its very difficult to find some of these bugs. I have literally looked at hundreds of Hawthorn bushes, although that makes a change from the hundreds of bramble bushes I looked for Sloe bugs in. A couple of posts ago I said that I'd seen lots of Green Shield bug larva but no adults, well it must be the right time of the year now as I have seen quite a few.

Something slightly different this week came in the form of this little critter.

I believe that it is a Notostera Elongata. This is a female of the species I believe. I also had the luck to come across a particularly sweet example of the Scorpion fly.

I tried to get a crab spider and managed a reasonable shot but it wouldn't stop still.

It is possibly the nicest arachnid isn't it?

Dragonflies were mentioned at the beginning of this post, I spent possibly the best 2 hours or so of my time this year at the side of a largely overgrown pool watching and trying to photograph Southern Hawkers, Migrant Hawkers, Common Darters, Ruddy Darters and Common Blue Damselflies. But in all honesty if I had not clicked the shutter once during that time it still would have been fabulous experience. I had Common Darter land on my arm and chest, I had Hawkers hovering so close in front of my 300mm lens that I could not focus on them, but the highlight of the day was a female Sparrowhawk that flew over my head and across infront of me on two occasions. On the second occasion she hit a blackbird in a bush about 50 yards away, I wasn't close enough to photograph it and she was up and off very quickly, but wow what an experience.

I did get a few shots, but due to the position of the sun and the growth around the pond they weren't quite what I would have loved. For that I would have needed to have been standing in the water and my name is not Chris Grady.

A mix of Migrant, Common Darter, and Southern there.

On a slightly different note I am intending to move up north again soon, back to Chester, I am hoping it will have all happened by the end of October, If it does I am so looking forward to winter waders etc on the Dee estuary. My mother has struggled with winter for the last two years so I am moving nearer to be of help to her and my siblings.