David

Male Banded Demoiselle damselflies resting on vegetation.

They look very similar to the beautiful demoiselle male, except for the wing having a darker patch towards the end: in the beautiful demoiselle the entire wing looks dark.

Wild arum, also called lords and ladies, jack by the hedge, cuckoo pint and several other names: a common wild plant of shady places “by the hedge”. The cluster of berries pass through the colours of traffic lights as they ripen from green through yellow to red.

Female emperor dragonfly ovipositing (depositing her eggs).

As with most dragonflies, it is the more brightly coloured male which is easier to spot.

He will patrol his territory, a patch of water. Flying fast, up and down, with frequent jerky changes in direction, he challenges and sees off any other males who try to muscle in, and never seeming to pause for any reason.

Their movements are so fast, and so unpredictable in detail, that I’ve never managed to get a male into focus for a photo.

The females, as here, do settle as they are placing their eggs. Eggs are laid on pieces of floating vegetation. A female depositing eggs will move around a couple of places, land on a choice piece of vegetation, and curve her abdomen to place the eggs with precision.

Ragwort is a common plant of hedgerows, meadows and waste ground.

The plant is poisonous to cows and horses, and so not wanted in or close to paddocks and grazed meadows. But it is an important food source for many insects, some of which, like the caterpillars of cinnabar moths, absorb the plant’s poisons to protect themselves from predators.

Peacock butterfly caterpillars, their bodies covered in hair and barbed spikes to deter possible predators by promising an uncomfortable mouth for anything trying to eat them. These were on nettles, the food plant.

Close-ups of ripe barley seen from a footpath by a field on the ridge between the Warwickshire Avon and Stour valleys – to me they look like a hypnotic vortex.

A wider view shows a landscape with Stratford landmarks peeping over the tree line. Almost dead centre is the Royal Shakespeare Company theatre. Further to the left is the spire of All Saints Church, where the playwright was buried