Thursley Common.

After my recent morning session with the Silver-washed Fritillary's at Bookham Common I decided to head over to the acid lowland heath at Thursley Common and did a circuit of the boardwalk to check out the wildlife.

Avian activity around midday was very quiet apart from a distant perched Stonechat plus Mallard with chicks and a pair of Tufted Ducks on the pools.

 While searching the water I located an Emperor Dragonfly ovipositing amongst the vegetation.

Due to the warmer conditions a few of species were taking advantage of the boardwalk to rest and soak up some limited sunshine including a large number of Common Blue Damselflies .....

 .... and numerous male Black-tailed Skimmers (Orthetrum cancellatum). It is easy to get these confused with a Keeled Skimmer (see below) but the Black-tailed has a dark brown-black pterostigma.

I only managed to find one male Keeled Skimmer (Orthetrum coerulescens) perched above the water. Distinguished from the Black-tailed by the totally blue abdomen; the parallel light markings behind the head plus the obvious yellow pterostigma.

Numerous Common Lizards were also basking on the boardwalk and I'm always intrigued to see how close I can get by slowly creeping towards them before they scurry away into hiding.

Other sightings included Four-spotted Chasers, Blue-tailed Damsels, Great-spotted Woodpecker, a single Swallow, a few high flying Swifts and a pair of Hobbys made a brief foray over the pools.   FAB.