Blue-Tailed Damselfly at Watermead

Strangely enough, I never thought about writing a blog about random things I find interesting before. However, I can't keep quiet any more. Here is my blog about things that catch my eye.



Lets start with Watermead Country Park. What a great place. Today the sun was shining brightly, the air was still and scented sweetly by some unknown flower. As we got out of the car I became aware of how quiet it was. Then I suddenly realised that I could hear lots of things. Firstly there was layers of bird song coming from every direction. It was coming from nearby and from further afield. There was the joyous chirping from unseen robins and blackbirds and the more solemn wooing of distant pigeons. Beyond that you could hear the constant low rumbling of water pouring over a weir.


We walked south on the east bank of the River Soar past countless flowering dog roses and into a meadow. This meadow always seems to contain a marvelous variety of strange looking snails. I have wondered in the past if they are Roman snails. Sound strange? In the undergrowth around sites where the Romans lived you can often find Roman Edible snails that in the 1500 years they have had to escape just didn't get far away from where they were domesticated. Since there was a Roman taverna near here I think its quite possible.


Occasionally a Damselfly would fly past and settle on a leaf. I saw three species but only managed to photograph one, The Blue-Tailed Damselfly or Ischnura Elegens as he is known to his mates. I could tell that this one was definitely a male, since the females are brown. This is a good animal to see in our rivers because they mostly eat midges and mosquitoes. Its also an indicator species. Because this species is resistant to allot of pollution if you see this damselfly and no other then the river is polluted. Luckily we saw two other species whilst we were down there.


We were also impressed by the range of wild flowers that we could see growing on the river banks. One that caught my eye was the purple nettle Marsh Woundwort (Stachys Palustris). Several of these could be seen amongst the stinging nettles,which were well in flower and had stopped stinging. In times gone by this was used to stop heavy bleeding as the fine nettle like bristles created a large area for the congealment of blood. It also is one of the few plants that support the Green Tortoise Beetle.