Blue is one of the three primary colours. It is the colour of planet earth when seen from space. It is strongly associated in nature with both the sky and with water, so blue has an obvious link with a lakeside setting, such as Stocker’s Lake.
Yet when it comes to the plants, animals, birds and insects around the lake it is fairly uncommon and perhaps this is one of the reasons why it is so striking when it is seen in the flowers and fauna.
What really got me thinking about ‘blue’ this week was a truly strikingly beautiful blue I saw.
It was an iridescent light blue, almost electric in its brilliance. It was the blue of what I thought at first were dragonflies but were in fact damselflies. They were out in their multitudes, flitting around the flowers, the nettles and the pathways.
While watching the damselflies, I noticed another blue insect – a butterfly I thought at first , but now think is probably a dragonfly.
I must admit to being pleased with my photo of it – you can see the hairs on each of its six legs.
As you may have guessed my corrections were the result of some research during which I also learnt that dragonflies and damselflies are a type of dinosaur.
But my research was later in the day, back on my walk; having started to think about blue I tried to remember where else I had seen blue around the lakes. My mind went to another iridescent blue, which sometimes i would see only as a flash, low over the river or lake…
but on other occasions, I would be treated to a longer view as its ‘owner’ would sit on a branch. The bird in this blue coat was of course a Kingfisher
The blue of their plumage is darker than that on a damselfly, and perhaps it also has a hint of teal in it, but it’s just as eye-catching. One other reason why the kingfisher’s blue is so striking and so memorable is that it is combined or indeed complemented by the orange of their bodies. It’s a classic complement colour. In the traditional RYB colour model, the three complementary colour pairs are red–green, yellow–violet, and blue–orange. (more post walk research!)
Back on my walk I then challenged myself to think of something with a blue much closer to the blue of the damselflies, and a bird with a splash of a light bright blue came to mind – a Jay.
Jays are not always the easiest birds to spot or capture in a picture as they are notoriously shy. Luckily a few weeks earlier one had flown into a tree opposite me and seemed happy to pose for a couple of snaps.
The other light blues which came to mind were flowers, many of which were still in bloom: the tiny blue forget-me-nots. Pale but bright blue and, if you stop and look at them closely, look as though they have been manufactured and stuck onto the stalks.
Other blues I thought of include blue tits and the blue-black sheen of a crow’s or magpie’s wing but I kept coming back to the fact that if you think about the colour of most birds and lakeside flora there is lots of brown, black, red, white, black and grey but comparatively little blue.
However, the blues you do see are more often than not worth the wait.
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