Hungary round-up

More images from a successful 'bat' trip to Hungary, a surprisingly enjoyable tour.

Just one Sympecma fusca was found, a fresh adult female, in the middle of a beech forest!

Fuzzy wuzzy was an owl. The easy bird highlight of the trip was a superb male Ural owl watched hunting around a forest clearing at dusk, whilst our batmen set up the mist-nets. Amazingly this was a WP tick for me.

Agile frog was nice too.

Once we dropped into the lowlands at the end of the trip we had a chance to chase a few more dragonflies. Ephemeral wetlands produced this fine Aeshna affinis, as well as Lestes barbarus but we could not find macrostigma in the short time available at the best sites.

Our last new dragonfly was Crocothemis erythraea, common at a spot we broke down at on the way to the airport on the last morning!

Female Crocothemis.

the last Lestes

The first week of our holiday was a wash-out, poor weather and a car crash put paid to that. Once we were mobile again we finally got down to Île de Ré for our 'week on the beach' with friends. This worked well and had the added wildlife bonus of a crack at the small Atlantic population of Lestes macrostigma. These enigmatic brackish-tolerant damselflies are found here in dense stands of sedges in old salt pans and were only recently discovered on the Atlantic coast of France. With such narrow habitat preferences and a naturally low density I was not exactly filled with confidence.

I need not have worried though because on our first bike ride, I stopped at the first suitable looking 'pool' and waded in to the vegetation, quickly finding that Lestes barbarus were abundant and turning up a fine male Lestes macrostigma. The 'pool' was as dry as a bone but the barbarus were busy ovipositing all the same. Nothing like optimism. This patch of habitat was in fact unusual and we only found one other like it during the week and this did not produce macrostigma despite extensive searching. A return to the original site produced a pair of macrostigma the next day and I left the island feeling rather pleased with myself.

My last European Lestes species - a female Lestes macrostigma - a splendid animal and hard to find on the Île de Ré.

and the male.

Huge numbers of Lestes barbarus were present in the ephemeral wetlands of Île de Ré.

Odd to see Aeshna affinis, another ephemeral wetland specialist, holding territory over dry ponds on the landward edge of the saltmarsh.

Long time, no see - 26/7/09

Argiope bruennichi - a common four-legs in our villa garden in the Dordogne region

Aeshna affinis - another dragonfly that is was good to get re-acquainted with. These fed at dusk around the garden

Cool

Spent most of the holiday relaxing and catching up with family, but could not resist netting a rather Anax-like aeshnid that buzzed us at dusk this evening in the garden. Aeshna affinis is a splendid little beast. Other garden invertebrates included plenty of hornets (often munching on wasps) and the splendid wasp spider pictured above.