Lizards, dragons and walking on water...... a visit to Thursley Common.

Thursley Common in Surrey is one of the best sites in the UK for watching Odonata (dragonflies to you and me) with a species list of damsel and dragonflies numbering around twenty five out of a resident list of thirty eight for the UK and Ireland. They are here because an extensive area of small lakes, ponds and bogs provides good conditions for breeding, coupled with the mild climate and the rich and varied local ecosystem.

The reserve is managed by English Nature, who have built raised wooden duckboards over the marshy areas and some of the ponds, allowing good access to prime sites whilst keeping damage from enthusiastic nature lovers and their even more enthusiastic dogs to a minimum.

The duckboards provide popular basking areas for Common Lizards (Lacerta vivipara), which allow a surprisingly close approach before they scurry off between the boards to make their escape. They can be photographed at close quarters by slow stalking, avoiding any sudden movement and keeping a low profile, ideally lying flat on the boards and slithering forward, lizard like, after your intended subject. It by no means works every time but sometimes a lizard seems to find the experience of a camera lens approaching to within a few inches of its nose interesting enough to be worth sticking around. It's also worth noting that you may end up with a small crowd of interested onlookers behind you as you writhe about on the ground apparently photographing some wooden planks.



Common Lizard female.

The name Common Lizard probably arises from the fact that this species is more widespread than the only other British representative, the Sand Lizard (Lacerta agilis) but it has just struck me that the Common Lizard could be common on commons and that's where it gets it's name. Whatever the case, it is interesting that at Thursley, the lizards congregate around the damp marshy areas rather than on the dry heaths, their usual habitat, which make up the greater area of the reserve. It is possible that as well as the basking boards, the boggy areas provide a better supply of food in the form of insects, which also use the duckboards to bask in the sun.


Common lizard male.

The Thursley bogs are surrounded by an extensive area of heathland and forest based on the underlying Wealden sandstone and these areas too support an interesting variety of fauna and flora.

Paths through the drier areas are eroded to loose sand and these provide a breeding ground for mining bees and digger wasps. On hot summer days the sandier paths hum with thousands of tiny insects swarming just a few inches above the sand. Closer observation reveals them to be minute bees only 3 - 4 mm long, which feed on the heather of the heathlands and burrow into the loose sand along the pathways, presumably to nest and lay eggs. Mating activity can be frantic with clusters of bees rolling wildly around on the sand. These are known as mating balls and occur when a female, presumably emitting pheromones, attracts a whole gang of ambitious males (below) rather like frogs in the spawning season.


Bee 'mating ball'.

A definite highlight of Tuesday's visit to Thursley was photographing a Raft spider on the surface of one of the small pools at a damselfly kill. The Raft is one of the largest British spiders and certainly the most handsome, with an orange and brown body and green legs. It has hydrophobic (water repellent) hairs on its legs that enable it to move freely on the surface of the water where it catches prey that may have become trapped or waterlogged. The spider below is in the process of devouring a damselfly, which it has decapitated and in the first shot, you can just make out a thread of gossamer issuing from the spider's spinerette, which is also attached to the severed head. In the second shot it is just possible to see the damselfly's ghostly eyes and whitish toothed mask peering up from the below the water surface (to the right of the spiders right hind leg).

Raft spider with damselfly prey.




Raft spider at damselfly kill.

Incidentally, photographing the raft spider was a tricky business, which meant leaning precariously over the surface of one of the small pools from the soft spongey banks. To get the whole arachnid in focus, I needed to align the macro lens vertically with the water surface and within 30 cm (1 ft) or less of the subject. Try doing that with a spot two feet in front of you on a solid floor and you'll see the problem. Needless to say, it was impossible to hold this position for more than a few seconds (I should have kept up the Tai Chi lessons) so I used a small Gitzo tripod in monopod mode to stabilise the camera over the pond, whilst still hand holding it. I found that it was possible to judge what was going on in the viewfinder by looking down on it from quite a distance above and this made it possible to get the lens right down to its minimum focussing distance of 20 cm (8 inches).

Luckily the spider was too preoccupied with its prey to be spooked by my antics and was happily finishing its evening meal when I left and luckily too, I managed to keep myself and my valuable camera gear from a soaking.

As I mentioned, Thursley is noted for it's Odonata, so here are two examples of dragonflies and one damselfly taken last year on the reserve.

Mature female Keeled Skimmer dragonfly. The lovely shimmering gold of the mature female eventually fades to a brownish blue.

Male Black Darter.

The Black Darter is one of our smallest dragonflies and is not much bigger than the largest damselflies such as the Banded Demoiselle. It is altogether chunkier and more powerful however; its fast darting flight quite unlike the flitting flight of damselflies.

Small Red Damselfly male.

The Small Red is one of the rarer British damselflies, confined to a few sites in the south of England and differs from the more common Large Red by the absence of black markings on the abdomen and, with experienced observation, its smaller size.

Finally, from beauties to a definite beast, the Robber Fly, is quite common at Thursley. As you can judge from the larch cone on which it is perched, the Robber is one of our largest flies and not surprisingly it is a hunter. It preys on other insects and uses that dagger-like proboscis to pierce its victim and aspirate the body fluids. Which reminds me .... time for supper!

Robber Fly