2015 - my flight season finally kicks off

The 4th of June. Can you credit it? Following a wet Winter and Spring, the Summer is significantly later this year. This has turned out to be the one small flaw in my cunning plan for odo-watching in 2015.

Having decamped to the Wester Ross region of Scotland on a week's holiday, with the hope of seeing a few Azure Hawkers, the lateness of the season became starkly apparent. Plenty of excellent habitat, and certainly plenty of midges to provide nourishment, but not enough consecutive warm days to tempt any self-respecting damsel or dragon to emerge.

Still, there are compensations in the form of a variety of other wildlife: birds, plants and some more robust insects.

Finally, on the afternoon of Thursday, 4th June 2015, under heavy, grey skies, we struck lucky at the small pond behind the car park at the Beinn Eighe National Nature Reserve.

We were fortunate to discover four recently-emerged Large Red Damselflies, though the lack of light, and possibly my trembling hands, made photography difficult.

The staff at the Visitor Centre also reported that a Four-spotted Chaser had been seen at a nearby bog. The wait is over. And whilst we're possibly not at the 'All systems go' stage, we're at least carefully and slowly flicking the switches from 'Off' to 'On'.