isle of wight holiday Day 11-Evesham

Last day of the holiday, I woke up in Worcestershire, knowing that by the end of the day we would be in yorkshire. Having learned yesterday that stratford was a no go zone because of a large music festivel and therefore heavy traffic. Having all this into account we were at a loss as to what to do, the weather was overcast but warm, so we would be doing something outside. We decided that there might be some boats on the river at Evesham, so thats where we headed.
We parked, with the caravan in tow in a feild, that was labelled car park, but it was right next to the river. Whilst my mum and dad got their coats and jackets I headed down to the river. It was dotted every 10 meters with fishing platforms just above the water. I casually glanced around the surrounding vegetation to the platform I was on and was surprised to find a lone damselfly on a reed. I had spent all week looking for unusual damselflies and now, having left the island, was one. Because it was the first time I had seen one I was not as confident in my identification as I would like to have been.
In my eyes it was a white legged damselfly, only I couldnt see any hairs on the legs, however photo analysis proved that there were some hairs on the legs, so that it was a white-legged damselfly, my first.

-White legged damselfly
When my mum and dad and brother joined me I showed them and then left to go to a cafe furthur up. They decided to go for a walk into town, so I said that I would walk back down the river to go and have a look for dragonflies and damselflies.

When I got back to where i had seen the damselfly I noticed that it had moved onto a nettle rather than on a reed.

-White legged damselfly
I decided to walk furthur down the river, looking for potnetial dragonflies or more white-legged damselflies. At the first site I was at, looking at the damselfly, I noticed a couple of banded demoiselles. The fact is, as I walked furthur down the river there were ever increasing numbers of banded demoiselles, until just below the bridge there were absolutly loads.

-Banded demoiselles-in high numbers

past the bridge there continued to be loads of banded demoiselle, but about 800m away from the bridge I came to an off-shoot from the river which was labelled as a fish sanctuary, which had a lot more aquatic vegetation, although granted it was a lot smaller than the main river! The grass around the fish sanctuary was not mown as the rest of the grass was and in the grass I spotted this spider, which has stripy legs-that aside i know nothing about it!

-spider sp.
I walked around the fish sanctuary and flushed a small damselfly, but I couldnt re-track it down but then i was texted telling me to go back to the car for lunch. This gave me a chance to sort out my photos, as I only had about 10 left and so i needed to get rid of some rubbish photos.

After lunch I headed back to the fish sanctuary and was please to find more white-legged damselflies on the surrounding vegetation. The one pictured below i believe is a female white-legged damselfly, hence the paler colouration.

-Female white-legged damselfly

There were more too, including some stunning males. Once more there is no point writing about them, just admire the pictures of these stunning animals...

-White legged damselfly

As I was photographing the white-legged damselflies I spotted a dragonfly whizz past me. I managed to track it down this time and it turned out to be an immature common darter gender unknown. Due to the lack of photos I had available I decided to take only one photo of the dragonfly, and it diddnt turn out as well as i had hoped, but it still shows what it was.

-immature common darter

As I walked around again I found the most spectacular of the white-legged damselflies I had found so far, showing off its bright blue couloring and stripes.

-White legged damselfly

By the time I had finished there it was time to head back, so that we could begin to make our way back. As I headed back I spotted another variation of the white-legged damselfly, this one being brown/orange, I don't know what that means in terms of age or gender but it shows some degree of variation in the population here-which appears to be very healthy.

-White legged damsefly

And so ends the isle of wight holiday, although today was absolutly nothing to do with the isle of wight. it has been a good holiday, with lots of great things seen, it will be sad to finally leave!