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Re: Painted Ladies and damselflies.

by vivien-9 :: Rate this Message:

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Steve

Have just looked at your wildlife jottings with interest, lucky damselfly! Whilst I have not seen a magpie take a slow worm a male blackbird did fly off with a live one from my garden last year. It was a juvenile about 200mm. long. I do not know if the blackbird managed to eat the slow worm.

As the magpie is a larger, more powerful bird than a blackbird it does seem possible that it could take and eat a live slow worm.

Incidentally, I saw another male blackbird trying to subdue and eat a young grass snake far larger than itself many years ago, again I don't know what the outcome was.

Vivien Hodge

From: adastra-bounces@... [mailto:adastra-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Stephen Savage
Sent: Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:28
To: adastra@...
Subject: [Adastra] Painted Ladies and damselflies.

There has been the odd one of two painted lady butterflies in our garden (Portslade Old Village) this week with a sudden influx of 14 painted lady butterflies (minimum count) on the 26^th May. They were feeding on the dog rose, hebe and red valerian. A wonderful sight!

The damselflies have been emerging from our pond for a couple of weeks now. Most appear to be the large red damselfly Pyrrhosoma nymphula.

On a very windy 26^th May one of the emerging damselflies got into problems and on emerging from its larval form, feel onto the side of the pond. I carefully encouraged the damselfly to grab onto a piece of grass which I stood on my desk in a glass. It was too windy to try to get it back onto the pond plant. Once the damselfly had dried out and started to fly I took it back outside and placed it on the pond plants.

Anyone interested can check out the pics on my web log http://urbanwildlifejottings.blogspot.com/

Steve Savage

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