Friday 29 July 2011

Dragonfly Delights

After a spot of dealing with various bits of bureaucracy, I found time late afternoon to make my way up to Panama Flats, just to see if there had been any interesting arrivals.
The two main pools still retain quite a bit of water, but it's disappearing fast.
For the meanwhile it does at least means that there's plenty of shallow water and muddy edges to entice passing waders, so the coming weeks could be really productive. Potentially.
The number of greater yellowlegs had increased slightly since my last visit, and there were 9 present, plus a single lesser yellowlegs. At least 7 spotted sandpiper were around, and just 6 least sandpiper.
I scoured every small vegetated pool and creek but still didn't manage to dig out a solitary sandpiper...
A group of 6, what sounded like, long-billed dowitchers were feeding together on one pool, while another pair of silent dowitchers were feeding on another.
There were around 20 killdeer in the more vegetated areas of the fields. Of course, a handful of mallard and 130 or so Canada geese were here too, as always.

There was lots of dragonfly action, with common whitetails especially numerous in some areas.
A few darners (California or blue-eyed) were also around, plus a couple of cardinal meadowhawks (pictured).
For those back in the UK, as you can see meadowhawks are sympetrum dragonflies - known in Britain as darters.

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