Just a short post to explain a gap in posts. I was in the centre of Europe, in landlocked Hungary, on a Naturetrek holiday. Going on these organised trips is a relatively new thing for me: I used to see them as too expensive and also I valued independence in choosing where to go and what to do; but getting all the cumbersome and difficult arrangements made for you is a big plus and from a nature point of view, it helps a lot if you're going to be in a country for just a week or so to have a guide who knows exactly where the best spots are.
On the whole I was keener to see dragonflies on this trip than birds, as they offered a lot more scope for new species. In the end I saw a huge range of birds including both reasonably likely "lifers" - Great Bustard and Saker Falcon - and many other excellent birds - Roller; Bee-eater; Middle Spotted, Syrian and Black Woodpeckers; Wryneck; Red-footed Falcon; White-tailed Eagle; Cattle Egret; Squacco Heron; Pygmy Cormorant; both storks (17 Black Storks in one flock); Lesser Grey and Red-backed Shrikes; Short-toed Treecreeper and many others. Five dragonfly species were new for me and masses of butterflies.
Hungary is mostly very flat and rather dry and dusty, with a fascinating mix of architecture and a language completely impervious to most other Europeans. It has few cats, many bicycles (old-fashioned ones), many attractive churches (Catholic, protestant and a few Orthodox) and a lot of red wine.
The natives are friendly.
Nonetheless, I was delighted to re-establish relations with the sea, the cat and the British pub.
Showing posts with label dragonflies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dragonflies. Show all posts
Friday, 17 August 2012
Friday, 3 August 2012
Butter and Dragon
I'm a birdwatcher, but now seriously into dragonflies and a bit into butterflies, though it is frustrating how many of the former (damselflies) are very small and striped blue and black and how many of the latter in Britain are basically brown and orange.
Birds are residents or migrants. Migrants can be passing through or coming to stay. Their arrival and leaving dates are affected by the weather, but for example, by the late April the first clear night with winds from the south should bring some Whitethroats and although the odd bird may arrive very early, in Southern England you listen for the first Cuckoo around 20th April. However, typically you get a few of any species, then some more, with the main arrival two or three weeks after the first pathfinders.
Butterflies and dragonflies also work to a timetable, but it can be much stricter. A few are migrants or vagrants, but for most, when they appear, they've just emerged from chrysalis (butterfly) or straight from the larva (dragonflies). I'm describing the situation in temperate climes, of course: near the equator dragonfly slecies can be around all year.
Two weeks ago as I walked Essex and Suffolk footpaths, suddenly there were lots of Gatekeeper butterflies, small, quite brightly-patterned red-orange and brown butterflies often found in numbers around bramble bushes. Yesterday, suddenly around marshes, there were lots of restless, red, small dragonflies called Common Darters. If I'd picked the right two days, I'd have drawn a blank on the first and seen numbers the next. The Common Darters will be around in declining numbers into late October or even November.
I love the seasons.
Birds are residents or migrants. Migrants can be passing through or coming to stay. Their arrival and leaving dates are affected by the weather, but for example, by the late April the first clear night with winds from the south should bring some Whitethroats and although the odd bird may arrive very early, in Southern England you listen for the first Cuckoo around 20th April. However, typically you get a few of any species, then some more, with the main arrival two or three weeks after the first pathfinders.
Butterflies and dragonflies also work to a timetable, but it can be much stricter. A few are migrants or vagrants, but for most, when they appear, they've just emerged from chrysalis (butterfly) or straight from the larva (dragonflies). I'm describing the situation in temperate climes, of course: near the equator dragonfly slecies can be around all year.
Two weeks ago as I walked Essex and Suffolk footpaths, suddenly there were lots of Gatekeeper butterflies, small, quite brightly-patterned red-orange and brown butterflies often found in numbers around bramble bushes. Yesterday, suddenly around marshes, there were lots of restless, red, small dragonflies called Common Darters. If I'd picked the right two days, I'd have drawn a blank on the first and seen numbers the next. The Common Darters will be around in declining numbers into late October or even November.
I love the seasons.
Friday, 27 July 2012
A chance encounter
When I lived closer to it, I used to walk along the Stort Navigation on the Hertfordshire/Essex border fairly frequently, roughly between Harlow and Bishop's Stortford. Note for non-Brits especially: a "navigation" in this sense is a river converted to make it suitable for barges, straightened in places and given at least partly artificial banks. The Stort is the original river. The area is surprisingly rural, with woods, fielda and marshes.
Since moving further away, I've become seriously interested in dragonflies and took the opportunity of recent sunny weather to revisit the Stort, reckoning it would be classic dragonfly habitat - and so it was. I was looking out for birds and butterflies too and had my binoculars round my neck.
A tractor was harvesting hay close to the navigation. It stopped. A powerfully-built white-haired man, naked above the waist, got out and came jogging across the field and through a rough gap in the nettles and other vegetation to join me on the bank. He'd seen my binoculars. He was the farmer. Had I seen the buzzard, he asked. Note to Americans: this is not the small vulture you call a buzzard, but a kind of large hawk, which was exterminated in Eastern England in the 19th century but has returned over the last twenty years. I hadn't. He said it often came down when he was working in the fields to take any prey disturbed by machinery. We chatted about birds. I explained my number one interest that day was dragonflies. He asked about that.
On my way back I did see his buzzard.
So why is that worth a post? Some farmers are still hostile to birds of prey, but he was seriously interested. More than that, he was working, stopped his machine and went out of his way to reach me and talk to me. I was impressed - humbled, really.
Oh, and the Three Horseshoes at Spellbrook had good real ale...
Since moving further away, I've become seriously interested in dragonflies and took the opportunity of recent sunny weather to revisit the Stort, reckoning it would be classic dragonfly habitat - and so it was. I was looking out for birds and butterflies too and had my binoculars round my neck.
A tractor was harvesting hay close to the navigation. It stopped. A powerfully-built white-haired man, naked above the waist, got out and came jogging across the field and through a rough gap in the nettles and other vegetation to join me on the bank. He'd seen my binoculars. He was the farmer. Had I seen the buzzard, he asked. Note to Americans: this is not the small vulture you call a buzzard, but a kind of large hawk, which was exterminated in Eastern England in the 19th century but has returned over the last twenty years. I hadn't. He said it often came down when he was working in the fields to take any prey disturbed by machinery. We chatted about birds. I explained my number one interest that day was dragonflies. He asked about that.
On my way back I did see his buzzard.
So why is that worth a post? Some farmers are still hostile to birds of prey, but he was seriously interested. More than that, he was working, stopped his machine and went out of his way to reach me and talk to me. I was impressed - humbled, really.
Oh, and the Three Horseshoes at Spellbrook had good real ale...
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
North-east Poland
It's a while since I've posted about favourite places. Here's one a bit further afield (for me - not for the Ukrainians reading this blog).
Last year but one I went to Poland for the first time in my life. My main aim was to see new birds, and for that the outstanding area was the north-east corner of the country, but I wanted to spread my wings wider - so I sought to book with a nature tour provider for the first week to visit the Bielowieza Forest and the Biebrza Marshes before heading south to Krakow, with a bit of looking around Warsaw and Krakow, and visiting Auschwitz. Maybe I'll blog on that last thing some other time.
Anyway, my first tour provider let me down at the last minute and I'd already booked flights. Another Polish tour provider (step up Waldemar!) didn't have a tour for those dates but happened to be free and we agreed he'd do a one-to-one tour at still a very reasonable price. He's brilliant and I'll be happy to respond to anyone wanting nature tours in that area and give his contact details.
For the birders, well, I added five birds to my life-list, not easy in Europe nowadays - White-backed Woodpecker, Pygmy Owl, Great Snipe, River Warbler, Aquatic Warbler. I did even better with butterflies and dragonflies. Enough of that.
Warsaw was a busy European city. As we drove east things still looked quite familiar. As far east as the River Bug there are still people wearing Nike gear jogging with I-pods.
The far north-east was something else - another country, almost another continent, and Waldemar said it seemed like that to him too. As we drove into Bielowieza village along a dusty road, little knots of people turned to look at us. There were old women in head-scarves everywhere. The buildings were nearly all wooden, old and full of character. The churches were very, very different from the modern Catholic churches I'd seen on the way: in fact, most of the people in this area are Orthodox. It was clear that the place was poor, but a decent, resilient poverty, not the poverty of glazed eyes. As for my eyes, I think they must often have been wide. The whole place was so strange to me, and I've been in Africa and the Balkans. But it was fascinating strange, not worrying strange.
The forest was magic - a huge expanse of forest that had been forest since the ice-age receded, with a good variety of trees many of them emerging from, or standing by, shallow water, so to an Englishman it was like thick fen. It would be good just to stand in the forest, not in the silence but the birdsong - though the mosquitoes would be a problem!
When we left, it was for the massive expanse of the Biebrza Marshes, wetland far more expansive than anything else until you're in the former Soviet Union. This was less remote and was dotted with farms and villages, but it was still magic because of the extraordinary numbers, vitality and variety of bird and insect life.
It's a marvellous area and I hope to go back.
Last year but one I went to Poland for the first time in my life. My main aim was to see new birds, and for that the outstanding area was the north-east corner of the country, but I wanted to spread my wings wider - so I sought to book with a nature tour provider for the first week to visit the Bielowieza Forest and the Biebrza Marshes before heading south to Krakow, with a bit of looking around Warsaw and Krakow, and visiting Auschwitz. Maybe I'll blog on that last thing some other time.
Anyway, my first tour provider let me down at the last minute and I'd already booked flights. Another Polish tour provider (step up Waldemar!) didn't have a tour for those dates but happened to be free and we agreed he'd do a one-to-one tour at still a very reasonable price. He's brilliant and I'll be happy to respond to anyone wanting nature tours in that area and give his contact details.
For the birders, well, I added five birds to my life-list, not easy in Europe nowadays - White-backed Woodpecker, Pygmy Owl, Great Snipe, River Warbler, Aquatic Warbler. I did even better with butterflies and dragonflies. Enough of that.
Warsaw was a busy European city. As we drove east things still looked quite familiar. As far east as the River Bug there are still people wearing Nike gear jogging with I-pods.
The far north-east was something else - another country, almost another continent, and Waldemar said it seemed like that to him too. As we drove into Bielowieza village along a dusty road, little knots of people turned to look at us. There were old women in head-scarves everywhere. The buildings were nearly all wooden, old and full of character. The churches were very, very different from the modern Catholic churches I'd seen on the way: in fact, most of the people in this area are Orthodox. It was clear that the place was poor, but a decent, resilient poverty, not the poverty of glazed eyes. As for my eyes, I think they must often have been wide. The whole place was so strange to me, and I've been in Africa and the Balkans. But it was fascinating strange, not worrying strange.
The forest was magic - a huge expanse of forest that had been forest since the ice-age receded, with a good variety of trees many of them emerging from, or standing by, shallow water, so to an Englishman it was like thick fen. It would be good just to stand in the forest, not in the silence but the birdsong - though the mosquitoes would be a problem!
When we left, it was for the massive expanse of the Biebrza Marshes, wetland far more expansive than anything else until you're in the former Soviet Union. This was less remote and was dotted with farms and villages, but it was still magic because of the extraordinary numbers, vitality and variety of bird and insect life.
It's a marvellous area and I hope to go back.
Monday, 29 August 2011
Flying Birds and Dragons
Today, 29 August 2011, at Alton Water, Suffolk, an Osprey flew low over the path just ahead of me! A few minutes after I parked, a Willow Emerald Damselfly landed right in front of me - not such a surprise as Alton Water is probably the best place now for this recent addition to the UK dragonfly breeding population. Then the weather changed.
Not a birder or a dragonflier? Try it.
Not a birder or a dragonflier? Try it.
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