Here be dragons!
June 25, 2009 by Bird
Filed under Blog, Fauna, Good Stuff, Summer, Wild London
Yesterday was fine and sunny, so I thought I’d try my luck dragonfly hunting on Coppermill Lane. I had a tiny hope that I’d find the beautiful Libellula Depressa, or Broad Bodied Chaser I had seen there not so long ago; whether I did or not I couldn’t fail to enjoy myself on a glorious midsummer day like this.
Under the little bridges behind Springfield Marina this Mute Swan has been incubating her eggs for what seems an age. It looks nice and cool there doesn’t it? But when the sun swings westward the shade vanishes and she’s left exposed in the harsh sun; then she is forced to keep her eggs cool under her downy body. I’ve seen her gaping dejectedly in the punishing heat, struggling to reach the water for a drink without getting up from the nest. She drove a coot off that nesting spot earlier in the spring, and I wonder if, in her small and pugnacious brain, there is ever the vaguest sense of regret.
Further along Coppermill Lane I realised I wasn’t going to see any dragonflies or damselflies. Council gardeners had been at work with strimmers and mowers and cut back the long vegetation fringing the edges of the tracks and the towpath for miles and miles. The water was spattered with shredded grass and the longer vegetation which served as territorial perches for the dragonflies had been destroyed. I guessed the insects had dispersed into the marshes while the cutting was being done, and after a brief scout around revealed nothing I sadly got back on my bike and resolved to go up to Tottenham Marshes in search of bee orchids. I remembered the new pond and decided to enter the marshes via the pond track. That was the best thing I did all day! Nearing the water I saw a man with a camera around his neck who was clearly watching something. I asked him what he’d seen, and he pointed to this…
A male Broad Bodied Chaser, perched like an improbably beautiful mechanical toy on a stick poked into the pond mud. The photographer had placed the stick there in the hope of attracting a dragonfly and within moments this beauty had claimed the tailor made perch. I couldn’t have been more thrilled and started gabbling about how this was the only dragonfly I could recognise for sure and that I’d tried and failed to photograph one a couple of weeks before. At last, success! As I snapped away I noticed just how well…serious a camera my new friend had, and had to comment. Turns out that I’d bumped into David Cottridge, an award winning wildlife photographer who encouraged me to take my time and get the shot just right as I stood at the waters edge with my undistinguished point ‘n’ shoot. We discussed the various quirks of cheap cameras and the fabulousness of state of the art ones, and I picked up so many hints about the wonderful things to be found on the marshes, the best parts of the river and marshes in which to see dragonflies and damselflies (I didn’t realise that the River Lee which runs through the marshes is the best place in the UK for dragonflies!) and just kept on looking at that gorgeous powder blue insect.
While discussing the wildlife of the marshes it was only a matter of time before the subject of Bee Orchids came up. As I was talking to a man who knows Tottenham Marshes like the back of his hand I shouldn’t have been surprised when he casually offered to show me where they were, so I excitedly grabbed my bike and he shouldered a rucksack crammed with field guides, and off we went.
PS:- David, if by any chance you ever actually read this, thanks again for sharing your knowledge. I am sure I must have appeared slightly bonkers. I was so thrilled to find exactly what I had set out to see that day, and to have bumped into just the person who could help me was extraordinary good luck. No wonder my snake/tree identification skills, rudimentary at best, went right out of the window 
Love the photos! I hope you get some shots of the cygnets when they finally appear.
Unfortunately it’s grown FARRRRR too hot to go outside here. We’ll be housebound now until late Sept. at least. I’ll envy you over the summer. 
I do hope to do that… I have no idea how long she’s been incubating, but it could be any day now!
You know I’m not so good with the heat and I think if I lived in your part of the world I’d have to hibernate in summer
Hope you get a few cool days before September. I’ll try to post some nice cooling pictures to entice you over here!
You have a lovely website. Great use of Wordpress. I’m glad Michelle’s Nature Notes brought me here – she’s a good connector of nature lovers! Lovely photos. Look forward to reading more.
Thank you Leora and welcome! Michelle does seem to be wonderful at that; I’ve only found her recently and I’m blown away by how much information there is on her site and how generous she is. I’m glad to have met you through her!
I love your shots of the swan and dragonfly. I hope the swan’s babies will hatch and survive. So cool how you found the dragonfly by asking David what he was shooting.
Hello Carver, nice to see you here! I could not believe my luck with the dragonfly, and bumping into David too. I’ll probably be visiting the swan once a week now so I’ll keep everyone updated on her progress.
I am glad you left a comment on my site and at Michelle’s. Your blog is lovely! I so enjoy reading about other people’s adventures in nature and their musings. Your impression of the swan’s possible regret was quite interesting. It would make a great story, especially for young readers.
Hi walktowrite, nice to meet you! And thank you so much, you know nature notes has turned out to be a very lovely thing, I’m so glad I discovered it – and Michelle! It’s already been lots of fun discovering folk like yourself through it. I am most interested to see what happens with the swan. Between you and me I don’t think there is much in her beautiful head beside grumpy thoughts and fluff, but wouldn’t it be interesting to know for sure? It would be a LOT of fun to make up a story about what we imagine is going on in there!
What is this obsession with mown grass? I think the English started this obnoxious craze for velvet lawns. At great ecological cost.
What great dragonfly photos! Just what you wanted to find. Lucky girl. Then meeting David, a fellow enthusiast, what fun. So, did you find those orchids?
It’s true, we English have a LOT to answer for! To be honest they only cleared a 12 ins margin on one side of the trails to keep the pathways clear so it wasn’t quite as destructive as I made it sound, though bad enough. What drives me nuts is the times they pick to do this work – just when everything is at it’s height, when the caterpillars are on the nettles and everything. They could have mowed a couple of months ago, the paths would have stayed open till now and all the breeding birds and insects still would have had adequate cover. I don’t think they have the faintest clue.
And that lawn thing? Never seen the point in them! We have a small grassed area in our tiny garden but wildflowers are welcomed into it with open arms. A traditional lawn is a green desert as far as I’m concerned. Ugh!
Oh yes, and we did find those orchids… but I’ll save them for another post!
Isn’t it great when you bump into someone who shares your enthusiasm for nature? I know when I was taking photo’s of the painted ladies in Cornwall, a rock climber came up and started chatting away about them, it was lovely.
Point and shoot it may be (lens envy is a terrible thing, LOL)………but they are cracking photographs, beeeautiful wings.
Your lady swan looks to be very patient
Chrissy, it made my day to bump into someone I could share my enthusiasm with, especially someone who knew so much! There are more nature enthusiasts out there than we could ever guess. Living somewhere so urban where I’ve come across kids who refuse to walk on grass because it’s “dirty” I’ve often feared that us Brits have completely lost our connection with the natural world. It’s so reassuring when you realise it’s not entirely true.
Oh yes and I suffer lens envy so much! One day I will have a beautiful digital SLR with a whole selection of lenses, but till then I will just squeeze whatever drops of goodness I can from my humble snapper.
What a beautiful critter! Thanks for sharing him
Thanks for coming to visit Svasti! I’ll have to come over to your place some time today… I am so far behind visiting other peoples blogs it’s just embarrassing!
Hello Bird..I am a tad behind on my blog reading..You have such a lovely gentle way of writing that I wish I had. I am more in the ‘teaching’ mode I think. That is when I am not complaining about my Mother. LOL. You are new to my blog, but I have lamented often that the other home owners around these ponds all trim the vegetation right to the water leaving no place for the dragons. Our part is left untouched and is such a refuge for critters large and small. I will have to do another post on it. And the dragonfly photos…WOW……Michelle
Hi Michelle… I am hugely behind with blog reading myself, to the point that it’s getting embarrassing. Hopefully we all understand how hard it can be to keep up
The neatness craze in gardening drives me absolutely nuts. I think the only thing to be said about being surrounded by chopped, shaved and regimented gardens is that you then get so much more wildlife in your own – where else can it go? Actually that’s not quite right, it’s not neatness in its-self but you know, that strange kind of neat gardening where you can tell the gardener does not like/has no interest in living things. I think you get what I mean. I bet those people also have pale upholstered furniture that their children and pets are not allowed to sit on. Where is the joy? Sigh. Anyway, rant over. You see, I do have my little ranty moments
Wow, Bird. These photos are the best! A point ‘n shoot…really? Well you’ve done an awesome job–every detail is crystal clear. I just love that beautiful blue on the dragonfly. And how lucky to come across a famous photographer on your outing–sounds as though you were in the right place at the right time. Good job!
Hi Holly…yep, my camera is a point and shoot. I’ve used it constantly every day since I got it so I know all it’s quirks but trust me it isn’t perfect! It blows out detail in whites and the lens isn’t up to much in many ways, but it’s great in low light and the macro is very good. It’s a Fuji Finepix F20 (I think…the manufacturers logo and make wore off long ago). We have a bittersweet relationship
I was very lucky to bump into someone who knew the Marshes so well, it felt like being given the keys somehow to have all this great insider knowledge and information passed on. I know I’ll bump into him again one day too, he is a local like I am
What a cool adventure, and SUCH a handsome dragonfly! I love this little story you shared, from the swan to your fortuitous meeting, to the lovely pictures. I checked out David Cottridge’s website, and am impressed. I LOVE the texture in his images! I am often captivated by textures I see around me, and trying to capture them on film. Of course, I haven’t devoted the time or expertise to them that Mr. Cottridge obviously has. How very cool to bump into him at just the right time! How nice that he was welcoming and helpful.
I use a point-and-shoot, too! Poor little old thing, it’s been through the wringer. One of these days I’ll get a nice new camera, but until then my trusty pocket companion will have to keep truckin’ on. They certainly teach us to work around limitations, don’t they?
Hi Kit and thank you! It was a really lovely day, and full of good luck too. It really was fantastic to talk wildlife with someone who had plenty of local knowledge – I’m eager but I don’t really know a lot, so I lunge at the chance to pick other peoples brains! I loved David Cottridges website, he told me that for the moment it’s his art prints on the site (and aren’t they lush?) so there is another whole other body of work that isn’t even up there. It was also fun to talk cameras and post editing though I trailed behind severely on the subject of equipment
You know, there are so many of us out there using point ‘n’ shoots that there should be a special point ‘n’ shoot club! I might berate my cameras lack of lenses, manual focus and unerring ability to blow out highlights to kingdom come but secretly I’m very affectionate towards it.