As above, so below.

A male Broad Bodied Chaser dragonfly perches above the sky’s reflection on Tottenham Marsh Pond. You can read more about how I came across this beautiful insect in the previous post, Here Be Dragons.

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Here be dragons!

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

Hunting the elusive Bee orchid

Whilst doing the seed bomb workshop a couple of weeks ago I discovered a delightful fact – allegedly there are Bee Orchids growing on Tottenham Marshes about a mile and a half from my home, and they are due to start blooming right now. How could I resist such a lure? I’ve been neglecting the marshes lately, so I got on my bike and went to see what I could see.

What I saw, alas, was not Bee Orchids. It hardly mattered though, since I was out and about on the last glorious sunny day of this summer so far, and what I did find was rather wonderful in it’s own right.

Zooming down Coppermill Lane through a dense tunnel of rank vegetation, assaulted by the shrill voices of wrens and the scree of nestlings in every tall shrub I wondered why I don’t do this every day. When I got to the drainage ditches at Springfield marina the air was filled with zipping electric blue sparks of Enallagma Cyathigerum – the Common Blue Damselfly. I sat down beside the water and watched their nuptial dances, and was lucky enough to find these two in their extraordinary lovers embrace. If you view mating damselflies from the right angle their joined bodies make a perfect heart shape. Most bodies of water on a still sunny day will yield views of these lovely creatures right now in the UK, and they are well worth looking for. I also saw a glorious Libellula Depressa – or Broad-bodied Chaser, a male dragonfly with a body the colour of powdered and bottled summer skies. Naturally he teased me by flying from his territorial perch every time I got him into focus but I don’t go on these adventures just for photographic trophies and it’s just as well – I would have been deeply frustrated that day!

After half an hour of happy damselfly and tadpole watching I got back on the bike and rode along the River Lea navigation towpath. Shoals of small fish swarmed in the still water and mute swans fussed over their huge nests, and overhead swallows chattered. I was at Tottenham marshes at last.

It’s not much to look at, perhaps, to some people. A swathe of rank long vegetation sandwiched between a busy road, allotments and a canal and with pylons, gasometers, bus depots and factories looming at it’s edges, it’s not many peoples idea of a wildlife paradise. But it’s truly wild, and this liminal post industrial landscape is where the revolution starts, you mark my words. It’s places like these that are home to undiscovered beauty, the covert reclamation of land by all the other living things besides the human. Of course it’s managed to some extent, but the beauty of places like these is that things slip in under the radar – this kind of land is the sort that will suddenly sprout, unexpectedly, a beautiful flower from seeds or rhizomes that have slept in the earth for years.

The air was thick with the scent of elderflower and pollen tickled my eyes and dusted my feet. The voices of many warblers made one territorial claim after another, each responding to the last in a singing chain, a necklace of song. I wheeled the bike along and searched in vain through the long, tangled vegetation.

Was I sad that I didn’t find any Bee Orchids?  Not at all, not when so many other beautiful things crossed my path. The bee orchids got me out of the house and may have been my stated aim, but their coy refusal to show themselves led me to other secrets every bit as marvellous.