3rd time lucky!

Ober Water is the only place in the New Forest where you can see white-legged damselflies. We tried to see them along the water earlier this year, as well as last year, but without any success. As you can probably guess from the title of this blog post, we did finally see them! With thanks to Paul Ritchie from Hampshire Dragonflies, who pointed us in the right direction (around the footbridges south and southwest of Rhinefield House, to be precise).

And this new species for us was happy to let itself get photographed, showing their flattened pale tibiae.

Of course, white-legged damsels weren't the only odo's around. Nine species in total, including masses of keeled skimmers, many small red damselflies, a few golden-ringed dragonflies and many beautiful demoiselles, dancing and sparkling in the sun.

Although our focus was on dragons and damsels today, we didn't ignore butterflies, of course. Eight species in total, and the commonest by far were silver-studded blues.

So here are today's tables (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):