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Showing posts from July, 2019

Flight paths at the riverside

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Watching dragonflies with Mark (Martin Kelsey) Late June and July are when things really take off. I am sitting on a water-worn rock in the shadow cast by a single-arch stone bridge. My body adjusts to its smooth contours and I relish its coolness and the shade: a respite from the heat surging from Spanish-blue sky. The ancient bridge, which is just wide enough to walk across, also carries a stone channel along which clear cold water races, on its way to irrigate vegetable gardens  on the other side of the deep valley. Water dribbles from the rim of the arch of the bridge, leaking from this channel, creating  a silvery cascade dripping down to the river below. Dodging this constant trickle, a pair of Red-rumped Swallows bring food every couple of minutes to young hidden in the bowel of their mud-built nest at the apex of the arch. The adults give their friendly budgerigar-like chortle. A pair of White-rumped Swifts zoom up the valley, somewhere they will be using an abandoned Red-r