Beautiful demoiselles!

Up until very recently, we'd never seen beautiful demoiselles. A month ago, we went to Crockford Bottom to try and see them, and indeed we did! Following on from that blog post, we got information on where to see them much closer to home, in Southampton itself, and again, we saw beautiful demoiselles. 

So that was all great. Imagine my surprise when yesterday I saw a beautiful demoiselle male in our front garden! Where did he come from, showing up in a tiny urban garden??

Thinking about where the closest suitable habitat might be, I thought about Hollybrook Greenway, which does follow a stream for a while. And that Greenway is only five minutes walk from home ...

So popped over for half an hour or so during my lunch break today!

Perfect habitat for beautiful demoiselles indeed, and it didn't take long before I saw several; three males and two females in total. I hadn't brought my proper camera, so only had my phone to try and take a picture of one of the males, which I watched for quite a while flitting and fluttering over the water, and disputing his territory with another male.

And when I got back home, a male beautiful demoiselle welcomed me in the back garden! So all the time, this species we'd never seen until very recently was living just five minutes from home ....

Few butterflies as well, including the first silver-washed fritillary for the year (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+).