The damselflies get ready to party

Like their larger cousins the dragonflies the damselflies are also hatching earlier, by several weeks. Here is a newly emerged damsel that has fluttered to a perch on which to hide. If damselflies had to catch their breath, this is the moment. When they first heave themselves out of the old larval skin, left clinging to a stem of reed or grass around the edge of the pond, the newbie adults are dull coloured and poor flyers. The blues, reds or greens of the mature adult have yet to burgeon and instead the dull, faintly marked brown intermediate is called a teneral. This one had just about made it to a handy branch, then snuck around the other side where it thought I might not see it. At this stage it can be hard to identify the species but this one if likely to be an Azure Damselfy, which are one of the most common. A give away is the dark line that runs diagonally to about half way across the thorax, in the photo just to the bottom right of the thick black bar that runs the length from the wing bases to the rear of the neck. This half-a-line is typical of the Genus  Coenagrion and in Northumberland Coenagrion puella, tha Azure damselfly, is the only likely find. That is a bit of a cheat, I know. It could instead be a remarkable find of a species never before found up here, and I will double check. For now I did not want to scare the little damsel. It feels a bit intrusive, sneaking up to gawp as it gets changed to dance and fight away the days of summer in search of a mate.

A glamoruous dragonfly hints at summer’s warm days.

This exquisite creature is a Broad Bodied Chaser dragonfly, newly hatched and showing itself off  in the mid May sunshine. These are musclely, showy critters spangled gold when they first emerge. When they take to the wing it looks like someone has chucked a fistful of cheap and cheerful chocolates in the air, wrappers glittering. They are also confiding, allowing a close approach, confident in their getaway speed. Like many dragonflies they wiggle and tilt their heads as you sneak up trying to catch a better view of you. This one was loitering in Newcastle today. I am not sure if they have established at Druridge  Bay, but they have been moving north over the last twenty years, like so many of their relatives. Broad Bodied Chasers are often very quick to turn up in new ponds, even sites with very little vegetation. This individual may be a male or female. The females stay this beautiful collage of gold and browns whilst the males develop a powder blue coating over the abdomen as they mature. Newly hatched males have the same colours as females maybe to reduce trouble from their older kin who see off contenders for the same territories in aerial duels.

I found this one today three weeks earlier than I normally spot them, and the first Common Blue damselflies were fluttering up too, also early. Keep your eyes open along the Bay. The coastal wetlands are top spots for dragonflies and damselflies in the north east but under-recorded. I suspect there are many dragonflies  to be found between Cresswell and Amble that we’ve not noticed before and these unusually early arrivals may be a good omen

Build it at Cresswell and they will come

The sheer rush of late spring is now in force along the Bay. The green flush of new grass and herbs are overtopping the scraggy debris from last year. “Build it and they will come, as the film” famously puts it and certainly the tadpoles have arrived. These tidtads area few days old in the new ponds dug in the corner of the field just on the Cresswell village side of Blakemoor Fram, by the track where many a bird watcher parks. The tadpoles have aligned themselves, strangely reminiscent of aquatic musical notes, along the underside of Flote grass (Glyceria fluitans) leaf blades. The tadpoles still huddle together for protection although the new ponds are still fairly uninhabited by more malicious wildlife. So long as the ponds do not dry quickly (and this corner is a fairly safe bet for staying wet) they should do well. New or temporary ponds make a good refuge from fish or many of the larger invertebrate predators that take a while to colonise. The frogs have got in quick. The new ponds are already markedly different to one another. One is filling up with straggling amphibious grasses as it dries out. Others remain nicely flooded and with varying amounts of Celery leaved buttercup (Ranunculus scleratatus) and Flote grass beginning to establish, classic colonists moving out across the bare substrate.

The adjacent oil seed rape has exploded into bloom, smartingly yellow on the eye and with an evocative wallop of mustard perfume if you walk close by. Well worth doing. It is the smell of late spring turning into early summer, a raw blast of scent and colour. Not every-ones’ favourite but very evocative, a modernist ruthlessness to the colour, smell and wall of stems in contrast to the rough half land, half pool of the untidy corner

 

A very polite and literate eider duck

 

Druridge Bay is blessed with a fine range of bird-watching blogs. Not surprising given the richness of bird life and the regular rarities that turn up. I am not the world's best bird watcher, although I treasure the Bay for the first swallows of the year and the sheer incredulity of breeding avocets. I should be more used to avocets. As  a teenager I used to volunteer at the RSPB's jewel in the crown at Minsmere in Suffolk. Avocets were one of the specialities, then found at only a handful of southern sites. My rubbish bird ID was no hindrance to being a volunteer because there were always other vital jobs to do such as keeping an eye on the car park. Not a glamorous task but a year as a shop assistant had taught me great deal about helping people. Or explaining politely why they couldn't visit that particular day because the reserve was closed and they must have driven past five "Reserve closed" signs to get there. Now there are avocets back again at Cresswell, straining the brackish lagoon for tiny invertebrates in between prima donna-ish fits at the approach of just about any other species.

 

Other bird life is more polite. This eider tucked waddled along the road into Hauxley Reserve last week, then, presumably seeing the sign that the reserve is closed, settled down to queue. Clearly ducks just need one sign unlike their Minsmere visiting human brethren. Literate and polite: makes bird watching so much easier.

Pond creation made to look easy (because it is)

Here are some other examples of the relative simplicity of good pond creation, to follow up the last blog featuring the newish pools dug out on Blakemoor Farm near Cresswell. The pond above is not at all near Cresswell: it is from a Forestry Commission site in the SW Scottish Borders from the late 1990s. This is before the renaissance in pond studies and the spread of improved advice. The Commission was willing to have a go at pond creation. Nothing fancy ofrlarge scale, but successful. This site is a small corner of a plantation, one of three ponds scrapped out to create a cluster rather than one big, deep, boringly similar site. In high summer this new little pond was close to drying. I have never seen so many Emerald damselflies (Lestes sponsa) as I did that day. The rushes and grasses were a misted by their glittering wings and sparkling bodies. They like sites that dry out, with the females laying eggs in the stems of plants above the water which hatch the following year if water levels have risen sufficiently to submerge the lower parts of the shoots and leaves.

At another site the Commission’s staff had simply added a few deeper JCB gouges to another pool. These refuges were full of beetles and waterboatmen, hanging on for when the rains returned, although, knowing water beetles and waterboatment, the rains better not be too long coming or else they’ll all have eaten each other.

Nothing fancy or complicated but simple habitat creation and above all a willingness to try

The Blakemoor pondlife ideal home exhibition

 

Loss of habitat is one of the main threats to our wildlife. Mostly the loss is not intended to hit the species involved but simply the result of how we use and re-use the landscape. Habitat recreation can be tricky. Ancient woodland is impossible without a time machine and most landscapes take time and expertise: reed cutters, hardy sheep, nest creation.....It's all a lot of effort. However ponds are just about the easiest habitat there is, something anyone can do. Much of the advice that used to worry would be pond diggers turns out to be not essential. Once upon a time it seemed that ponds always have to be large and deep, over 1 metre certainly so frogs didn’t freeze, and with stepped edges like an inverted Mayan temple to make sure you got all the different plant zones.

Thankfully most of these problems turn out to be myths, well and truly nailed by Pond Action (now the Freshwater Habitats Trust. They have lots of excellent information and advice at http://www.freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/habitats/pond/). Shallow, temporary, small ponds do very well for many plants and animals, although fish may be the exception. Good water quality certainly helps, and also ponds created in clusters so you get a bit of variety. It is surprising just how varied adjacent ponds can become. Nor do you have to worry about getting the ponds planted up. They will colonise rapidly and over doing the planting can miss out the earlier pioneer stages as beetles and bugs explore the new opportunities. Given how easy it is to create new ponds and how rich they are in wildlife it is the one thing everybody should do.

Here are some fine new ponds in a field corner just by the entrance to Blakemoor Farm. This is a wet  hollow, more or less where the road to Cresswell sometimes floods over. Rather than dig out the whole area (which would be a shame… the wet grassland is valuable in its own right) they have put in a cluster of ponds. They look a bit gaunt and square at this stage, but that is just how we see the world: the bugs and plants do not fret about the geometry of an ideal home. Great to see some pro-active, thoughtfully done habitat creation. These are ponds to be proud of.



The sands of Druridge Bay: a reverse egg timer

 

The mysterious linear  pond at the country park does seem to be an anti-tank ditch, one of many disconcerting objects and shapes scattered along the Bay.

There are other questions prompted by the report on the historic environment of  the Bay (Check out at http://www.aenvironment.co.uk/downloads/Druridge%20Bay%20Management%20Plan.pdf)

For example the map above is from Armstrong 1769, part of the report and more of less the area of the Bay for which Banks the mining company are hoping to develop as a new open cast. At the southern end of the map is “Blakemoor Hall”, and, maybe “Cook esq”. I am not sure what the Hall could be (if anyone knows I'd be grateful to hear), having always assumed the row of houses at Blakemoor farm, just as you walk into the hide at Cresswell lagoon, are much more recent with no older structures of any substance. However the farm outbuildings are older looking. There is also a road that meanders out onto the beach from Cresswell, heading north, suggesting more use and industry than you’d find there today, barring the occasional sand extraction excursion at Hemscott.

 

For such a walked, watched and loved stretch of coastline there remain many uncertainties. From the Neolithic footprints in the peat beds and flooded forest stumps, through the medieval at Chibburn to the WW2 pill boxes the Bay seems to capture time. Whereas an egg timer’s sand marks the tumbling progress of the time it seems that at Druridge Bay the sands clog and mire the passing years and hold all these fragments  in a jumble of half forgotten histories.