To add to my Dragonfly list, I took a trip down to Goring to see the Common Clubtails which can be seen emerging on the concrete footings of the railway bridge over the Thames there, and I certainly wasn't disappointed with 5 seen emerging, including a couple that I witnessed the nymphs climbing up out of the water and then was treated to watch the whole emergence process taking place over the ensuing couple of hours, with a selection of pics showing the emergence below.
I had hoped to see a mature one there but failed to locate one, but a check of the river further downstream at Pangbourne produced the goods with this one found in the bankside vegetation and which subsequently happily crawled on to my fingers. Note that the eyes on Clubtails are separate unlike the eyes of the other dragonflies occurring in the UK. By clicking on the two images below you'll get a larger sized version with better image quality.
Next port of call was a nearby site which holds very small numbers of Marsh Fritillaries, which after a lot of searching finally gave themselves up with c4 seen.
An added bonus came in the shape of good numbers of Small Blues, which unlike the ones seen a few weeks ago happily proved to be more photogenic.
My first Large Skippers of the year were also noted, along with a few Brown Argus, Dingy Skippers, Small Heaths and this Peacock.
