HESC Side Story

Parental guidance: the following blog has scenes of gratuitous violence and images of a sexual nature. If you or your kin are likely to be offended by these, it is recommended that you navigate away from this page now.

Your usual scribe is unable to bring you his centenary blog due to er... unforeseen circumstances, so here I am, kindly guesting at short notice. They call me Strio, they also call me a ne'er-do-well, but me and my flighty lady love, Sympetra, are living for the now.

An uneasy silence falls, broken eventually by the sound of clicking fingers...

Click

I guess you could call us a gang, a bunch of unruly orphans, we're the only family we have.

Click

Our neighbourhood is the Hanson Environmental Study Centre (HESC), a run down nature reserve on the North side of the city. It's a wild place, governed by the laws of tooth and claw, where it would never do to show weakness.

Click

We're The Darts, always looking to defend our territory from The Hawks. Not afraid to fight and always ready to rumble.

Click

Folks don't approve of our lifestyle, the way we pick on those smaller and more vulnerable than ourselves.

Click

They say stuff like, "You're nothing but bloody common." Or, "Why don't you and your ruddy mates just clear off."

Click

But the park bench is our meeting place, we don't see why we should move.

Click

As kids, we had nothing, but once we got our wings, man, well you've got to fly, right?

Snap

My pal Rudi, he's a tough guy. You wouldn't want to mess with him. He likes to live life at the sharp end.

Jeez, there was one time, man, Rudi was beating up on this blue-job. Would've killed him too, if the Bigs hadn't turned up.

Here's some of the gang, just hanging at the bench.

And this is me and Sympetra, making out on the bench.

This neighbourhood won't be here forever. Live fast, die young, that's our motto. I guess when the Winter comes, that will be that. Like I said, we're living for the now.

You Bigs just don't understand.

Hedgerow sensual

What a cracking morning. Blue sky, slight breeze, the warmth of the sun gently easing the autumnal chill from the countryside and a perfect day to head to Clifton Reynes.

Located above the flood plain of the River Great Ouse, across the valley from Olney and Emberton, it's a pleasant village to visit at any time of year (and even better if the Robin Hood Inn is open). The surrounding fields, paths and hedgerows are bursting with colour. In these parts, Autumn paints from a lush, rich, fruity palette, contrasting with the overgrown, faded watercolour that Summer became, to give the land a vibrant and heady glow before Winter sets in.

As I walk up the lane from the village towards the river, butterflies and bees bask in the morning sun. Red Admirals and Commas, looking impossibly pristine in the September light, jostle for position as they feed on the cascades of ivy flowers.

The hedgerows are full of the fruit of a fertile season; blackberries, elderberries, sloes, haws and rose hips. In the course of an hour or so, I meet several dozen folk out brambling, laden with free food, who look at me quizzically as I stand empty-handed gazing at the bushes. For blackberries aren't my quarry today. I may be listening to the church bells, pealing across the valley, I may have the fresh scent of the season in my nostrils, but I'm looking for dragons. On an Autumn morning, this is a great spot to find them, roosted low down in the warm sun, but out of the cool breeze.

I am not disappointed (well, apart from the lack of bramble and apple pie in my very near future), for I find Migrant Hawkers and Common Darters at a reasonable height to photograph. A few Brown Hawkers hunt over the brambles, out of range, and I put up a Southern Hawker from the base of a hedge.

This one's mine!

Male Migrant Hawker

Migrant Hawker and Black Bryony

Whilst trying to capture an image of a Red Admiral, I inadvertently spook a Little Owl from a mature Hawthorn tree, and as I wander back to the village, a pair of Buzzards cry overhead as they quarter the fields.

Love on the rocks

There's been much discussion at Tense Towers recently, regarding the subject of photography. What works, what doesn't, how is parameter A affected by parameter B, et cetera, et cetera.

I will admit straight away that as a young Tense-let, back in Mr Musgrave's Physics lessons in the mid 70s, I realised that photography was not a discipline in  which I was ever going to excel. A small cardboard box, a pinhole and a sheet of greaseproof paper was, and is, about my limit of understanding.

Be that as it may, I've occasionally pitched into the conversations about F stops, apertures, exposures and white balance like a complete duffer, because let's face it, it's all just magic involving a tiny imp and a painting set, isn't it? Oh... sorry, no, that's Discworld. My mistake.

The discussions have spread to the Admiral and the Prints of Wales, as there's a wealth of knowledge out there. It's just that I think, genetically, I'm a point and click kind of guy, and always will be. Our lass, on the other hand, has a set of chromosomes of a different colour, which gives her the talent for spotting a good picture.

However, it's possible that she may have misunderstood some comments regarding length of exposure...

Yep, that's her with her new friend Nik.

Changing tack a bit, I'm happy to report that there's a few more darter dragonflies about at the moment. Whilst down at our local reserve, I managed to capture this male Ruddy Darter, soaking up the heat from the morning sun.

Meanwhile, back at Tense Towers, our lunchtime snack was interrupted by a flurry of activity beside the pond. Several Common Darters appeared, males trying to hold territory and females looking for a bit of peace and quiet. Fat chance. The result being... love on the rocks.

We interrupt this blog...

Breaking news... the Tense Towers pond has recorded a new breeding species of dragonfly!

When I returned from work yesterday evening, I scanned the pond for signs of life, whilst enjoying a mug of tea. Lo and behold, there were two exuviae (empty larval skins) clamped to the reed stems. Too big to be damsels and too small to be hawkers. A swift perusal of the relevant ID guide (thank you, Mr Cham), confirmed that they belonged to Common Darters. Sadly their owners were nowhere to be seen, presumed on the wing elsewhere.

This morning, still in shorts and slippers, I ventured out again, just in case. There was a further larval skin which we had missed the previous evening, but also a newly emerged adult, still clinging to its exuvia whilst it inflated first its wings and then its abdomen. Predictably, I was nearly late for work!

Early morning and we have emergence

The day was not as warm as yesterday and there were frequent rain showers, some of them heavy. These facts would explain what I found on my return home...

But not a very warm day, so still around at tea time

In fact, there were now two adults, neither of which had felt like venturing far all day, presumably due to the conditions. We've seen Common Darters in the garden almost from the minute that the pond was dug, seven or eight years ago. I recall that we've witnessed plenty of Dartery love (pervy, I know) and Mrs D laying eggs. But we've never had proof of confirmed breeding for this species, either by finding an exuvia or a newly emerged adult. So this was an historic moment for the Tense Towers pond and a pleasing endorsement of our wildlife gardening ethos.

An all home grown Common Darter

There, that makes up for two Odo-free weeks in Shetland, more of which later...

Sunday? No, Darterday!

None of us could face driving to the coast on a Bank Holiday weekend, so we made our second visit of the year to Woodwalton Fen. With a fair smattering of cloud and a gusty wind, our best odo opportunities were going to found in the occasional calm, sunny spots. There were Hawkers on the wing and a few damsels to be seen, but the stars of the show were the Darters. Both Common and Ruddy were showing off their sartorial skills by roosting on all manner of articles. Hats, shirts, trousers, rucksacks, they didn't care.

I should point out that the pink top doesn't belong to me... as mine's in the wash.
At one point, MGLW was at the centre of a territorial dispute between two male Ruddy Darters, which was a nice way to spend our anniversary weekend, I thought.

A Really Brief History of Time

Wildlife watching opportunities have been a bit thin on the ground since my previous post. I did spot a Common Darter in our garden last weekend, "obelisking" into the sun during a brief hot spell. It's a very striking pose, which reminds me that, this winter, I should make the time (no pun intended) to design a dragonfly sundial. Later the same day, we ventured to the local reserve for an hour or so and recorded our first Migrant Hawker of the year. A nice male, roosting in the low afternoon sun. That brought my year list (sad, I know, but I'm a slave to my hormones) to a total of 25, which is my usual figure. Missing that Broad-bodied Chaser sighting now, eh, my lad?





Today being the first day of the Bank Holiday, I somehow managed to wake up at the normal time. How does that work? Monday to Friday, I'm rudely awakened by the alarm clock, wrenched from a pleasant somnolence by its strident tones. On a day off, Dink! my eyes open at exactly the same time without any explanation and I'm back in the land of the conscious. Grrrrr!

As the forecast was for sunny spells, we drove to Clifton Reynes and pottered about for an hour or so through the village, along the hedgerows, down to the river and back again. This produced a few Southern Hawkers, Migrant Hawkers, Common Darters and Banded Demoiselles, so we felt that we deserved a pub lunch. I can whole-heartedly recommend The Robin Hood Inn, excellent nosh. Now rather full and not a little tipsy, we wandered vaguely over the fields to Newton Blossomville, encountering more Common Darters, Migrant Hawkers and a Brown Hawker on the way. Our return, via Clifton Spinney, was enlivened by the flypast of a Spitfire and a Messerschmidt, aerial predators of 70 years ago, rather than the ones from 350 million years ago that we normally watch.