Somerset has a diverse range of habitats, one of the best in the country, Shapwick Heath has a little gem for me at least. The sweet track is one I like to visit each year if I can. Your feet may only be few centimetres above the water table and the peat of the causeway reverberates with each step.
Always a crowd pleaser, swans with signets, can popup any time. Here on the South Drain at Shapwick Heath NNR (National Nature Reserve)
Walking down the Sweet Track gives me a real sense of the past. The biodiversity seemingly unchanged since our ancestors of the Neolithic. It has been dated to 3807 BC, so a millennia or so before the Great Pyramid.
Dragonflies of course have been around since the dinosaurs. The Common Darter is one that still lives up to its name of common, unlike so many other species.
The Southern Hawker (Aeshna cyanea) can reach a body length of about 70 millimetres with a wingspan of up to 110 millimetres.
In Europe it is common and widespread. Yet I still don’t see them that often. Flying by too fast or camouflaged in the vegetation it can be tricky to see them. This one was about 3m up in a tree. I was lucky to get even this image.
It was a lucky day as further down the track I found another at rest.
The picture can only give a sense of being there on a hot June day. The humidity is high the air still. Add a little imagination and you get an idea how walking here a few hundred years ago might have been.
