Saturday, August 21, 2010

Dragonflies: the next generation

Before finishing my holiday report, I want to keep things current with my walk from today. It was a walk from the Stone to Steel website which I had set off to do before our holiday, but had been distracted by a) missing the turnoff for the start of the walk and b) getting distracted by some fantastic emergent dragonflies and a grass snake. Today went better from the routefinding point of view - although I think I missed one short section of the walk, but still ended up where I was supposed to be. It was a fantastic walk with lots of variation - riverside, woodland, hamlets, wheat fields, disused railway line and probably most spectacular - heathland. What could be more wonderful that the heather coming into bloom.

I was also astonished by the number of fungi. As I had a walk to complete, I didn't have time to root around too much for edibles, but did find a lovely little orange birch bolete and a small but perfectly formed bay bolete for the pot, so I thing a return visit in the near future is in order. At the pond where I photographed the emergent dragonflies, there was still action in the form of egg-laying females,

 and I managed to get a few nice photos. No snakes today, sadly, and I'm afraid birds didn't get a look in!

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