Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Too Close for Comfort


Guess I wrote too soon. Lazarus like, the summer reappeared, the winds still in the wrong direction. And I headed coast-wards anyway, as the lift was available. Not so far as a beach though, just a few miles inland by the Alde Estuary. Late summer visits to Snape Warren seem to have become traditional, but I don’t really know why. On this evidence I really don’t know why. An estuary mired in haze and glare and a heath encroached by sapling trees. You go where your lifts can take you and you go when you’re told. Today I was done early.

‘Did you see any birds?’ Mum asked.
‘Gigantic female Sparrowhawk’. She nodded. She’s been well trained. ‘And an Adder. First one for several years. It saw me before I saw it though. I only saw it slithering away under a bush several feet away from my own…’

And, in the spirit of life and (near) death, two days shy of a year ago I photographed this at the same spot. Apparently wasps only ever rarely attack freshly emerged dragonflies yet this is a fully adult Common Darter
 After some fight the dragonfly escaped.

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