whoopsie

It was cold and overcast today but I still found a great damselfly - on my computer! In 2008 I lead a tour to Turkey together with Paul Hope, expressly targeting the dragonflies of Eastern Muğla Province. We found 40 species in a week, finding several new sites for Ceriagrion georgifreyi and I found Paul a new species for the province - Leucorrhinia pectoralis. Despite all this going on, the Platycnemis dealbata pictured above slipped through the net somehow. I think this may be the only record of this species west of the Taurus Mountains. At the time I had never seen this species, but four years later just two seconds was enough to correctly identify it! I wonder what else is lurking in my photographs...

A sobering reminder that what makes observers good at finding rarities and vagrants is constantly staying alert to the possibility of actually finding one!

Postcard from south-east Turkey - Odonata

Coenagrion syriacum (a puella look-alike), one of the spring dragonfly specialities in the Hatay region of SE Turkey.

Managed a couple of hours looking at dragonflies whilst in SE Turkey this week, we only looked at two sites but came up trumps with a number of the regional specialities.

Platycnemis dealbata

Trithemis annulata

Brachythemis fuscopalliata

 The splendid Epallage fatime

and last but not least the superb Platycnemis kervillei

Postcard from Jordan

The focus of the first four days of the tour is a lot of black iris twitching. There is a swarm of black iris species and we have spent time chasing down three of them.

It is nearly 20 years since I was last in the Middle East. The birding has been slow in the north-west - too much hunting I suspect. Good to catch up with a variety of wheatears though and tomorrow we head south to the Dead Sea and beyond and we should start seeing some desert birds.

Not many wetland habitats encountered so far. A few stops at the Zarqa River have produced large numbers of Platycnemis dealbata though - a new damselfly for me.

Orchids have been on the menu too, violet limodore (pictured here) is a widespread parasitic species that I always enjoy seeing.

In the absence of dragonflies I am spending plenty of time looking at reptiles. This Ptyodactylus gecko is one of several new species for me.