The Keeled Skimmer.

I was disappointed on two visits I made to the bog three hours apart at Birk Bank yesterday. When I arrived there on both occasions the hot sun which had been blazing onto the bog had disappeared behind the clouds and a breeze blew up making things a little more cooler. 

However, on the second visit I did see a dragonfly briefly over the bog, then to settle on the board-walk for little more than 30 seconds during which time I managed one of my now famous half decent images before the creature flew off never to be seen again in the thirty minutes I waited for it's return.

But the brief sighting, and the resulting picture was all that was needed to confirm my suspicions that I had found the fourth Lancashire record of a Keeled Skimmer on Birk Bank Bog.  

Keeled Skimmer. Birk Bank Bog 22 July. Pete Woodruff.

The Keeled Skimmer is a species of bogs and mires in western areas and parts of southern Britain, populations are found in North Wales and Cumbria. The Keeled Skimmer became the latest species to be added to the Lancashire List when Allen Holmes found a male on the Grindleton Forest Pond in August 2013.

Steve Graham found two - possibly three - male Keeled Skimmers on Birk Bank Bog last year in August 2015, at which time the comment was made....'perhaps colonisation is finally underway'....maybe yesterdays sighting contributes to confirming this.

I'm grateful to Steve White, and my reference to 'The Dragonflies of Lancashire and North Merseyside' and 'Lancashire Bird Report' in helping me with this excellent record. 

Otherwise.

There were other interests for me yesterday when I went up the track from Rigg Lane to cross the top of Birk Bank and back to the bog for my successful return there three hours later, but other things have now taken over my birding/blogging life, so this will have to wait until I get the weekend behind me.