Last month I visited Keith and we walked around his home patch on the Isle of Grain, so this month he came up to London to walk around my local patch in Eltham.
The Tarn
Starting at the Tarn we saw the usual residents. Notable for their absence were butterflies and dragonflies, as we saw none of the former and only a single Large Red Damselfly. Although this species has a long flight period throughout the summer, this was a surprise to me as I had bot recorded any here for at least a month.
Large Red Damselfly (archive photo)
From there we went onto Eltham Palace where after coffee, we walked my usual circuit around the grounds again recording no butterflies and only a single Small Red-eyed Damselfly in their usual lilypads.
Small Red-eyed Damselfly (archive photo)
Keith had not been to the house before so before lunch we took the opportunity to go around the house. After lunch we redid the circuit with entirely different results. On the north moat, we had an Emperor Dragonfly (which are normally there) and around 6 Small Red-eyed Damselflies, which I have never previously record on this side of the moat (their usual lily pads are on the south side). In the gardens we had 10+ Ringlets and 10+ Meadow Browns, a good opportunity to look at the distinguishing feature of these two Brown butterflies.
Meadow Brown
Ringlet
Meadow Brown
By now it was time to head back to the station to end our day. In the end it had been a good day and we seen some of our target species.
Coot
Coot
Young Coot
Grey Squirrel
Coot
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