I had managed to see Highland Darters, now a subspecies of Common Darter, as well as, Common Hawker and Golden-ringed Dragonfly in the Beinn Eighe area. All of these species had eluded me on my first visit during overcast conditions before the ORCA surveys. So, it was good that the sun had emerged and encouraged them to start flying. However, I was still looking for my first Northern Emerald. The problem is on sunny conditions, Emeralds love to fly at tree-top levels. There were at least three appearing erratically over the area where the Hawkers were flying. My early encounters were not hopefully and I can only label them as Emerald sp.
Finally, one of the others spotted a Northern Emerald that had landed.
A second individual landed later in the afternoon: this was a Male.
It was still warm and sunny around late-afternoon, and I decided it was time to leave and head across to the Loch Garton area. This had several sites for Northern Damselfly which was my last British breeding Damselfly. Although the forecast was for the sunny weather to continue the following day, I gambled that the currently weather might last into the evening. It was about seven in the early evening by the time I arrived. As soon as I got out of the car, I could feel the temperature had probably dropped too low for the Northern Damselflies to still be active. I checked a couple of nearby sites and there was no Damselfly activity. Still I could get an early night in the Focus Hotel, after a number of recent long days and be fresh for the following morning.
