A fairly quiet day on the patch today birdwise failing to find my own Yellow-browed Warbler, and failing to see two others that had been seen locally too. The only highlight being a Tawny Owl found roosting in an ivy covered tree in Warren Wood as it hooted loudly as I was passing.
However the day was more than salvaged when up by the reservoir I flushed an emerald damselfly from the grass in front of me. Fourtunately it only flew a metre or so, so I quickly set about the task of trying to id it as there was a good chance it was one of the rarer species. A check of the pterostigma ruled out Southern (which has a bi-coloured one), so the next thought was that it could be a Willow. It was proving hard to stand far enough back to focus my bins on it but at the same time make out the detail on the thorax so I decided the best course of action was to get a photo and blow up the picture on the monitor to check its appearance.
Luckily it allowed close enough approach for a decent pic and checking the results did to my delight show that it had the prominent side spur on the thorax typical of Willow Emerald Damselfly. I took a few more pics and then quickly made a phone call to get others to the site and stood well back to avoid disturbing it. However frustratingly, more so for them, as they were in sight it flew again but this time was caught up in the blustery wind and was swept away out of view and could not be found again despite searching.
With this to my knowledge being the most northerly record so far in the UK, and only the third site in the county where they have been recorded, this was an excellent record, and a Norfolk tick for me. One can only speculate as to its origins, presumably it had just arrived from the continent during the recent (south)easterlies rather than it being one moving north from Suffolk where they have recently colonised, although I guess it could have been around for a while undetected.
So a great find that I was really pleased with, and also delighted that the photos hastily taken came out pretty well too showing both the side spur on the thorax and the black-bordered orangy-brown pterostigma well to confirm its id.
