Wednesday 19 May 2010

Watery wildlife

The weather here has been much warmer this week and as a result the plants are beginning to bloom and insects return.

Our first damselflies of the year began to emerge on May 17th and continued on the 18th. It's pouring down with rain this morning so I doubt that there will be any more emerging today.

These are large red damselflies Pyrrhosoma nymphula and their exuviae:




Each time I bent down to look for damselflies this frog leaped to the safety of the pond:


The water crowfoot is flowering for the first time (though admittedly there's only one flower so far) in the larger pond:


The bugle and marsh marigolds are almost past their best now, but hopefully the yellow flag iris will flower soon and provide some more colour around the ponds.



3 comments:

Randy Emmitt said...

Helen,
Looking forward to more of your odes posts! Yesterday I found 4 kinds of dragonflies that had emerged after or during the rains. They were Eastern Pondhawk, Blue Dasher and Slaty Skimmer, Common Green Darner had already left the area. One post back on my blog I featured some nice odes BTW

Helen said...

Thanks Randy. I'm very behind with reading other peoples blogs this month, but look forward to reading your posts when I catch up.

Scriptor Senex said...

I had one Marsh Marigold flower - from the plant you gave us - but there are a few more buds on it so it has obviously settled in OK.