Archallagan

Damsels and Dragons

 

Monday 29th July, 2013

 

On Friday I got an email from Dorothy saying that she was ". . . off to Archallagan this morning with a club member who says the pond area has Damselflies".  So we were excited when she wrote again on Saturday evening  and asked "Are you OK for a Monday walk.     Meeting at Crosby . . .  to go up the hill past Marown Old Church on the Millennium Way.    Making our way to Archallagan Plantation to see the little lake with hopefully some Damselfly still there."  Attached to her message was an amazing photograph she had taken of a large red damselfly. 

 

I had a look on the internet.  I was curious to find out why these weird and wonderful insects are called damsels.  I wasn't successful but I did find some interesting facts.  Apparently damselflies and dragonflies are one of the oldest types of insects and the only thing that has changed since prehistoric times is their size.  Fossils have been discovered in North America and Siberia with wingspans of about thirty inches! 

 

They have many different folk names like "devil's needle", "water witch", "goddess' horse", "devil's horse", and "snake killer" in Germany; "devil's darning needle" and "horse stinger" in England and "hobgoblin fly" in Sweden.

 

I couldn't wait to leave for the walk on Monday morning and was ready in good time when Danny nearly scuppered the whole plan.  He has occasional fits of loud sniffs/snorts which don't usually last long - but he gets very distressed and once had a nosebleed after a really bad bout.  It seems to be caused by an irritation in his nose.  Anyway, he started sniffing just as we were going to leave.  I waited for a bit to see whether he would recover but he carried on.  We decided that we couldn't leave him . . . but we couldn't stay at home and miss the walk . . . so the only alternative was to take him with us and carry him if he got tired.  I rushed round packing his equipment and we let him out of the front door.  He promptly stopped sniffing and when I went to pick him up to put him in the car he trotted up the steps and sat outside the front door waiting to be let in again.  The dog had more sense than me.  He knew he wasn't fit enough for a long walk.   

 

After the dog panic we had a further short delay because the rubbish lorry was coming up our narrow road and we had to wait until it was past our gate before leaving.  But we did manage to get to Crosby in the end.

 

We started up the very steep road towards the church.  This is part of the Millennium Way route from Ramsey to Castletown and is the last of the hills if you are walking south - not a nice prospect after walking for hours.  But not so bad on a cool, damp and slightly misty morning at the beginning of the walk.  We passed a colourful patch of Rosebay willow herb - a very pretty wild flower but not one that I welcome in the garden.  As well as having wind-borne seeds, it spreads by underground runners and forms dense, invasive patches.

We stopped at the Marown Old Church before turning up the farm road towards the plantation.  I thought of asking Tim to stand by the entrance to the church to show how low it is and forgot - but he had the same idea and took this photo of me.  I was reading the sign that we saw on our last visit - asking visitors to close the door in order to keep the pigeons out.  It would have been a more impressive photo with Tim standing there because he is about eight inches taller than I am.

I wandered around and found this Red Admiral resting on one of the gravestones.

Before we left we discussed why there was an old stone step stile at the side of the entrance gate and decided that the stile must predate the gate.  I suggested that the stile might have been built to keep sheep out of the churchyard but Dorothy said that she thought agile sheep would be able to climb over it.

We walked up the road through the farmland.  Most of the fields are used for grazing but we saw a large field of barley just before we reached the plantation.  There were a lot of butterflies around - mainly Meadow Browns and Green-veined Whites.  We did see one which was more colourful but it sped off into the barley field before we had a chance to identify it. 

 

Then we turned down the track through the plantation.  For a while, the track follows the edge of the plantation and we had a view of the surrounding countryside.  This field near the old farmhouse hadn't been intensively grazed or cultivated and we wondered whether it had been deliberately set aside.  There were large numbers of small white butterflies flying low over the vegetation.  They were too far away to identify but I thought they might be Green-veined Whites (Pieris napi) because we had seen so many on the walk.  I wondered whether they were feeding or planning to lay eggs.  When we got home I checked the UK butterfly site.  There didn't seem to be any listed larval food plants in the field but there was a lot of bird's foot trefoil and that is listed as a preferred source of nectar for the Small White (Pieris rapae).  So perhaps they were Small Whites. 

We turned off along the path through the trees towards the pond.  The path divided when we reached a rather artistic wooden sign attached to a tree.  The path to the left seemed to be going in the right direction but the sign pointed to the right - so we tried that path.  Eventually we realised that the right path went the wrong way and we forced our way through the conifers until we reached another path that led back to the pool.  

 

It is a very pretty setting and the damselflies were still there although we didn't see a Large Red.  The best area for spotting them was in that grassy patch on the far side of the pool.

The first one that I photographed wasn't actually a damselfly.  It was a dragonfly - a Black Darter (Sympetrum danae) 29 - 34mm.  It took me a long time to identify it because it is a female which is more yellow than black.  I wouldn't have been able to identify any of them accurately without a short-lived blog "Isle of Man Dragonflies" which provided a species list of confirmed sightings on the Island - just four types of damselflies and ten varieties of dragonflies.

Then I found a Common Blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) 32mm.

 

And finally, saving my favourite photo for last, an Emerald Damselfly (Lestes sponsa) 38mm.

We were reluctant to leave the pool but eventually made our way down to the entrance to the plantation near the old Cornelly mine.

 

In the middle of the path down from the plantation I noticed a Small Tortoiseshell sunning itself on a stone.

We turned down the road to get a better view of the remains of the mine buildings.  The Cornelly mine produced lead.  It was first worked in 1837 but its productive period was between 1874 and 1884 and it closed in 1886.  Tim noticed a ragwort plant growing on the top of the tall chimney.  It is a very tenacious plant.

I was interested to find a big patch of Yellow Loosestrife near the mines because I have only seen this plant in gardens before.  It was a bit too bright and glary to get a good photo so I was delighted to find another patch down by the railway line in a suitably shady position.

It was getting hotter and hotter as the morning progressed.  I was feeling particularly hot because I put on an anorak before approaching the pool because Dorothy said "horsefly protection" was advisable.  Then I couldn't take it off again because the zip stuck fast and I didn't want to hold up the walk while I unstuck it. 

 

We took a narrow path, strewn with loose stones, down towards the old railway line the valley.   It wouldn't be a Manx walk without at least one or two ruins.  The remains of this old cottage were set amongst a little grove of trees which gave some brief but welcome shade.

  

Then Tim took this photo of us.  Hot and tired and looking carefully down at the path ahead to avoid tripping over stones.

The last leg of the hike was the long walk along the railway line back to the cars.  It must have been nearly three miles but at least it was level, and shady most of the way. 

 

PS  Danny was full of bounce when we got home and had obviously forgotten all about his earlier attack of "the sniffs."  He made the right decision about not coming.  He would not have enjoyed meeting four very boisterous Labradors in the plantation and the last part of the walk was too hot for a little black dog.