Exbury Gardens

Last year a new dragonfly pond was established at Exbury Gardens, and it would be rude not checking it out, wouldn't it?

Turned out that Exbury Gardens has a range of ponds throughout the site, so we made sure to pay them all a visit. 

We were seeing a good range of damsel and dragon species (including red-eyed damsels, migrant and southern hawkers and golden-rings), until I saw a darter which was clearly redder than the common darters we're familiar with, and it had all-black legs for as far as we could see. Ruddy darter??? If so, that would be a new species for us ... Fortunately, it was very accommodating in terms of letting us take pictures.

Not wanting to talk ourselves into having seen a new species, I posted the pictures on the British Dragonflies and Damselflies group on Facebook, and quickly got the confirmation I was hoping for: ruddy darter indeed!

Exbury isn't as butterfly-friendly as Hillier and Wisley; we saw nine species, with nothing out of the ordinary. 

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