In the heat of yet another cloudless summer afternoon the still air in Ashes quarry wobbled in the heat haze. Blasting, hewing and hauling of limestone ended here 60 years ago. Since then nature has reclaimed this peaceful mile-long scar in the fellside; today the loudest sound came from chirruping grasshoppers.
The prolonged drought is unlikely to dry up the flooded quarry floor, an olive-green oasis surrounded by parched, yellowing grasses growing in the thin veneer of soil on rock scree. Standing on the edge of the squelchy bog, among cotton grass shedding its gossamer seeds and head-tall reed mace, I listened to the croak of moorhens hidden in channels among the forests of water horsetail, and also heard a strange plopping sound.
In the heat of the past week emerald damselflies, Lestes sponsa, have emerged from the shallow pools, fragile ballerinas with forget-me-not blue eyes and slender iridescent bodies darting across the water surface. Courting pairs chased through the vegetation; others, poised on floating leaves, were already laying eggs.
Then I heard that strange sound again and noticed a dark shape gliding towards me through the water: a foot-long carp. I watched, astonished, as it approached until it was within touching distance, almost aground in the shallow water and sucking in mouthfuls of silt-laden water around my boots. That plopping had been the sound of gulping, of this fish feeding and, no doubt, swallowing damselfly nymphs that were close to emergence as adults.
I had seen carp here before. Someone must have released them from a garden pond into the flooded quarry, where the water is now probably warm enough for them to breed. I couldn’t help but wonder how many more damselflies and dragonflies there might be here if these predators had never been introduced.
But perhaps their presence explained why a heron was standing in the water under the quarry cliff face, unconcerned by my presence. These birds must be the main beneficiaries of this additional link in the food web, maintaining some equilibrium in an evolving ecosystem: unwary carp like this one, feeding in ankle-deep water, would surely be the easiest of prey.
