After a couple of excellent ORCA surveys out to the Western Isles, I headed back to the Beinn Eighe area. The forecast was looking good for warm and sunny weather for the next couple of days and I wanted to prioritise looking for the Scottish Dragonflies I hadn't seen. In reality, that plan would have been blown out of the window, as I was well positioned if the pod of six Sperm Whales off Burghead the previous afternoon and evening were still in the area. But fortunately for them, they had moved back out into the North Sea. The first site I tried was a clearing mentioned in Watching British Dragonflies by Dudley, Dudley and Mackay near the Beinn Eighe picnic area. I saw a couple of sightings each of flyby Hawkers and Emeralds, which was an improvement on my previous visit before the ORCA surveys, when neither species were flying in the dull weather. But the views were too quick to get any photos or be sure what species I was seeing.
The only large Dragonfly I saw well in the area was a Golden-ringed Dragonfly. Typically, it was happy to land and pose for photos.
After an hour or so, I headed back to the car and onto the Beinn Eighe Visitor's Centre. My timing was good as I bumped into one of several people I met in the Beinn Eighe area who was looking for Scottish Dragonflies. But this was the first person who had actually seen Azure Hawker and Northern Emerald. There was a good area for both species by taking the path behind the Visitor's Centre and then bearing left whenever the path forked. After a few hundred metres the path runs parallel to the road and goes over a small wooden bridge. This guy had seen both species about one hundred metres after the bridge. They were generally flying high, but had come down to ground level as it cooled down on the previous afternoon. It sounded like it could be a long wait. As I approached the recommended area, I saw a couple of Highland Darters resting on waist-high bushes.
This was an unexpected bonus as they were generally expected to start flying around the start of July. But they must have emerged early in the recent good Scottish weather. I have two Dragonfly books from the early 2000s, both of which treat Highland Darter as a separate species from Common Darter. However, there are comments that the taxonomy wasn't finalised and it might be a Highland subspecies of Common Darter. It looks like it is now treated as a subspecies of Common Darter based upon the British Dragonfly Society and National Biodiversity Atlas websites.
Soon after I joined John, a Manchester-based Birder and Dragonfly watcher to look for the Azure Hawkers and Northern Emeralds. While we were looking, this Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary dropped into the grass briefly, before flying off, never to be seen again.
I will cover the search for Azure Hawker in the next Blog Post.