Indian Summer

The weather seems better now than it has been for most of the summer. Yesterday I had a walk around the meadows and found another new dragonfly species for the site, this is the 11th. It was a male Southern Hawker. Its surprising that I did not see one last year as it is usually one of the commonest large dragonflies of the late summer period. The Southern Hawker is one of our most beautiful dragonflies, the male having both green and blue colouration and the female is usually green and brown. They are very inquisitive, especially the males. Yesterdays male was continually hawking for insects around the pool, but on many occasions he would stop and hover in front of me, then move up and down like a helicopter to get a better look. At times he would be only 18 inches away. This was one of the few times that I did not take a camera with me, Sod's law!
There were also a couple of Brown Hawkers and while I was looking up at them I noticed a pair of Sparrowhawks and a Buzzard soaring high over the meadows. A Jay was already collecting acorns, does he know something about the forthcoming winter that we don't?