I had a day out with one of my new cameras, the second one had not arrive just yet but is here now.
Unfortunately my new camera took a tumble and this was not my fault...I stood up from doingg some macro photography because a couple with a pram were coming along a path towards me. I then started to black-out, as I unfortunately so often do, and the next thing I was aware of was lying on the floor on my side and sitting up, wondering where I was.
Turned out I had some sort of major seizure. I could feel convulsions, or violently shaking, as I came around. I bumpeed into the couple later and it turned out I was out for like ten minutes.
I had one of these once before ... a very long time ago and was out for about thirty minutes.
Also quite unfortunately I had been fearing as well as expecting something like this to occur as my black-outs had been getting stronger and I had been falling down on the floor as opposed to leaning and hanging onto a magazine rack while I blacked out in Sainsburys or WH Smiths.
Anyway .. while I was out a got a few things ...
Like Orange Tip Butterflies ...
A very tiny Damselfly like insect which I have no idea what it is ...
A small moth with a single large central white blotch ...
My new CamPark Action Camera which is waterproof and going to ive me a whole new dimension to my videos ... SUB-AQUATIC ;) ...
Not only did I spot a Small Red Damselfly but then went on to see bloody well loads of them!
I have only seen the odd one here and there, two or three up until today. But I saw several dozen and never seen them in this spot before!
In fact this spot seems to throw up at least two oddities every year and then there is always one or two things you notice. You also notice things not appearing too...like this visit, Southern Marsh Orchids (Dactylorhiza praetermissa) had their flower heads up. Except there were quite a few but closely bunched together, in a spot I do not normally see many and no sign of the Early Marsh Orchid either?!
EDIT:
It is funny as I forgot to mention that while riding around after spotting these I wondered if there were factors at play here with them like there are with amphibians. Take newts, now I have no doubt that everyone thinks that newts just live in a pond. You have a pond. You have newts in the water. But there is a lot more to it than that.
At the age of 13 to 14 I realised that our own three species of newts had preferences for both ponds themselves and even the areas within a pond. Smooth Newts (previously Triturus vulgaris and now the family name is Lissotriton or something else lol) like to be up in the weeds at the edges of ponds or mid water which is why they are often seen. Palmate Newts, going with Lissotriton helveticus here, like to rummage around in the bottom at the edges of ponds or a bit deeper. Crested Newts (Triturus cristatus) on the other hand like to be in deeper ponds in the middle, preferably 3 or 4 feet, though this is not true of The Southern Italian Crested Newts which can be seen courting in clear water on the edges of lakes in full sun. Also Crested Newts preference changes depending on the time of day and the weather. It is is the middle of the night or raining heavily enough they will venture to the edges of their ponds.
Now to compliment this I will mention one of my favourite newts and in fact favourite amphibians of all time and since a kid adds a nice and unusual spin on all this. The Alpine Newt, Messotriton alpestris, has a male that is blue with a low yellow and black barred crest. Sound amazing? Well it gets better as around the head, eyes lips and running down the sides to the base of its tail is a silvery band peppered with tiny round spots! It gets better still as on its flanks and directly below this silvery band is a turquoise strip with no spots running from the front legs to the back. Then there is the belly which is normally a uniform yellow to orange-red which can be uniform on the throat or itself peppered with silvery edge spots There are at least 8 or 10 different types, subspecies, so there are variations on all this. But there is no confusing this with any other newt, trust me!
Now something sounding so fantastically exotic in colour you would be forgiven for thinking comes from some tropical country somewhere? The truth is quite the opposite and in fact there are no newts found in tropical climates, sub-tropical at best with the Japanese Swordtailed Newt, Cynops ensicauda. Alpine Newts have their name for a reason...they like mountains and they like cold. They also like just about any pond and any part of the pond once they are in it. On approaching the waters edge many newts have been known to skirt the edge, even walking up and down it before entering but Alpine Newts dive straight in. The only times they do not is when they have decided to stay aquatic and remain in the pond all winter! They are one of only two of the European newt species where the larvae can metamorphose and stay aquatic. Meaning you can keep them at all stages of their lives in an aquarium quite happily. Most other metamorphosed newts would drown if you tried that. Except the Banded Newt (umm Ossotriton (?) vittatus).
There is one thing that Alpine Newts do not like, however, and that is too much sunlight combined with heat. So a shaded pond is better unless it never gets hot where you live. This can be deadly to them.
So back to the Small Red Damselflies and we have had a wet Spring...AGAIN...but with not constant rain and a few days of sun here and there. The water levels are higher at my sites than they have been since I started visiting there. So I wondered if the sudden burst of Small Red Damselflies has something to do with that like the newts? Amphibians can move about freely and quickly but if a batch of aquatic insect larvae are dug in around the very edges of a pond that then drops its levels down below it for a few years the numbers drop?
In this case maybe the Small Red Damselflies were there already and had been at higher numbers previous to me starting to visit it regularly six years ago?
Those are the little details about animals and plants that they do not explain and often do not think about. I could explain dozens and dozens of things like this regarding different areas of animals from every corner of the globe! I have been able to do this since I was about ten or twelve years of age and why I get so annoyed when people talk rubbish about animals on TV, it does them no good at all. It is also why I get furious when a park authority badly manages a wildlife reserve. Especially if they get paid vast sums of money for it!!
END EDIT
Mad. Well unless you have accepted my long talked about theory of the place...and the Lea Valley Park Authority?
Anyway here are a few photos of the Small Red Damselfly and a couple of videos ...
My new favourites, no not 'old' favourites, the Banded Demoiselles!
So very cool and very reassuring to know that these are back and I am back there filming them because I was begiunning to wonder where in the hell the summer had gone?! Especially as we were supposed to be eight weeks into a roasting and in reality its been two days and a couple of days 6 weeks back.
Unfortunately this sudden rise in temperature combined with my sudden need to cycle for miles resulted in the most gargantuan of headaches that I get eevery year at this time. How much the temperature has risen will dictate just how bad the headaches are, especially the early ones.
I have long suspected this is down to dehydration and refer to them as my Dehydration Headaches and that the awareness of my condition of Fibromyalgia and the fact that this condition does indeed affect your ability to deal with extremes of heat and extreme changes in temperature I think that the body must also dehydrate very easily and quickly when it gets too hot too quickly?!
I normally takes a few weeks or more to acclimatise to the changes, bah humbug!
Now lets hope the waether stays good, though a little cooler would be nice, because there are a few things happening on other blogs over the next few weeks. So getting a start on this one along with some tropical Orchid stuff happening on another one and my technology blog getting some much needed content its exciting times indeed!
No it is NOT a Southern Emerald Damselfly as I previously stated elsewhere and on YouTube, lol.
But then Lea Valley Park Authority are up to their usual tricks as they claim that at this site, a Dragonfly sanctuary, "over half the UK's Dragonflies can be found". My two brothers are heavily into this area and know far, FAR more than I do and they have both looked at me with utter surprise. IN fact one lives just two miles from this site?!
So when I saw a bright green Damselfly with white spots on the wings and no bands I get home, look up a website and identify it as a Southern Emerald! Lol!
I had the number 13 in my head but was not sure if that was the number of UK species or species to be found at the site. Turns out it was NEITHER as I now know that there are indeed no less than 54 species of Dragonfly in the UK?!
Now at over HALF the species this would mean around 30, give or take?! Well after 48 hours I can assure you that despite the sanctuary being nice you can knock the ZERO off the end of the THIRTY as due to this miss-identification WHAT i THOUGHT WAS four species has now turned out to be just THREE!
Also these guys are highly predatory and the sanctuary is not very big and I do not think can house 30 species of predators which likely means that if there were ever thirty species they were introduced and have since predated on each other and I watched, and likely filmed them, as the Demoiselles tried to catch the much smaller Blue Tailed Damselflies?! I got a video of a female Banded Demoiselle Eating just after catching something and the wing sticking out looked VERY Damselfly?! LMAO!
Now over odd things going on in the park at other locations I have covered, Primoroses and Orchids, use keyword 'conundrum' to find these posts to read more on what I elieve is a huge nature scam done VERY BADLY and even the locals have spotted it, this location comes under Epping Forest Council so they probably feed them cash for this site?!
I have been searching to get up close and personal with one of these guys ever since I took those distant photos and video of one?! I home chuffed with this encounter and a couple of others I had but boy was I in for a shock when I found another site with hundreds performing aerial acrobotics, lol.
This one was spotted at my Alpine Meadow site near the Bee Orchids!
