Valley Gardens @ University campus

At the centre of the University of Southampton's Highfield Campus is a small oasis of peace and quiet, called the Valley Gardens. Due to the covid situation, teaching has been almost exclusively on-line for me, but yesterday I had to be on campus for two face(-mask) to face(-mask) workshops. A lunch break separated these two workshops, and I decided to have lunch in the Valley Gardens, and walk around a bit, in the hope of seeing some butterdamseldragonflies.

Weather was mostly cloudy, but every once in a while, the sun came through. As the air warmed up, a handful of butterflies came out to play; five species in all (see the table at the end of this post for more details). 

Valley Gardens also has a few small ponds, and of course I checked these out for damselflies and dragonflies. Seeing no activity, I was about to leave when I spotted a large red damselfly resting on a stone slab. 

We definitely need to go back here for a proper butterdamseldragon trip a bit later in the year, when it's warmer and there are more flowers out. Also because the large oak at the end of the garden is said to have a colony of purple hairstreaks ...

The usual end-of-post tables (one  = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):