Darter Blind.................. (1 Viewer)

Darter Blind..................2

Crown Lakes in Farcet, Cambs. UK.

All five pics are the same subject.

Thanks, Gareth

Female Common Darter. What is the blind in your title?

I am use to seeing these darters around water or in a field where I live and behaving in a certain way. When I came to Farcet they were high in the trees, and resting on brambles and scrub. They looked much bigger than the darters I had seen before and made me doubt whether they were darters at at all. I am not sure why.
When I see them in a local field they are low down, often on bare earth and very skittish when I approach, these were perched on hedges and brambles and stayed virtually stationary of reasonably long periods of time.
I was looking trough Brooks & Lewington, again and again trying to find an answer. In the end I could not see the wood for the trees - blind.
When I post here I try hard to ID them myself and ask for confirmation. Otherwise I will never learn. I dislike just posting a pic and saying "What is it?".
Anyway, thanks for your help on all these!

In Britain's Dragonflies (Smallshire and Swash) it says for Common Darter "Found almost anywhere in the lowlands and often away from water. Look for it perched on the ground, on the brambles, or even high up on branches".

However, I would suggest ignoring location / habitat when you're trying to ID a dragonfly - stick to the features you can see on the dragonfly. I've seen dragonflies in many situations which don't fit in with what is written in the books

aeshna5 said:

Female Common Darter. What is the blind in your title?

Click to expand...

He means he's gone blind in relation to being able to ID Darters is my guess, it confused me briefly too.


A

Thanks for the advice Paul. Out of the usual (for me) habitat, I was watching them and they seemed to behave differently than I was used to - because of habitat, I guess. Then I start doubting that they are Darters, they all looked quite large but obviously that was just my mind playing tricks, suggesting to me that they were not Darters at all. I looked through Lewington/Brooks, cover to cover, again and again, until I was blind.
Interestingly enough - all the Darters in the scrub and bramble area were female, I did not see one male and was there for over an hour. By the water - everyone was a male. You'll see what I mean from my other photos of the visit. Anyone any ideas about that?

Females tend only to go to water when they are ready to mate + lay eggs otherwise they get harassed by the males. Also when dragonflies first emerge they go away from water to feed up for a week or two so it's possible that some of the females you see are in fact immature males that haven't coloured up, so superficially resemble them.

Thanks for the info, very educational.