It's late morning and the sun is high as I clamber over the stile by the bridge and leave the road. The clay soil is solid and the Arun has been reduced to a trickle in the vegetation-choked crevice below my feet. William Cobbett recorded his visit here in 1823 in Rural Rides: "Soon after quitting Billingshurst I crossed the River Arun which has a canal running alongside of it. At this there are large timber and coal yards, and kilns for lime. This appears to be a grand receiving and distributing place."
The canal is still here. Part of the Arun and Wey navigation network, it was cut to carry goods between London and Chichester and Portsmouth, the traffic reaching a height of 23,250 tons in 1839. Today, the canal is still. Dark and choked with weed in places, its flanks are heavily overgrown. Bright blue neon strips ? common blue damselflies ? hover and flick in the patches of light that spot its surface. The slow-moving, mud-bottomed waters of the canal and the Arun here are a perfect habitat for the larvae of another, larger damselfly, the elegant banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens, appropriately enough).
On warm, sunny mornings in early July the adults emerge in large numbers, often from shrubs and trees away from the water. The abdomens of the males glisten a deep metallic blue in the sun, their wings bearing the dark blue-black bands, like dirty thumbprints, that give the species its name. The males engage in territorial dogfights, their wings clashing with short buzzing bursts of sound, over prime egg-laying sites. The dogfights can last for several hours, the male with the most fat reserves, and stamina, winning in the end.
A dominant male lands on its regular perch after an aggressive aerial foray. Its four wings stretch out and sink back above its body. A female, her abdomen an iridescent bronze-green, settles on a grass stem nearby and waits.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/08/country-diary-newbridge-west-sussex1
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