29/06/2009

Dragon Hunting

Saturday June 27
We made our way to Minsmere from the clifftop caravan at Dunwich where we were spending the weekend, helping our friends celebrate. The sun burnt off the morning haar enough to activate the Dragonflies and Damselflies on the Minsmere reserve ponds. I spent a happy couple of hours on the boardwalk bridge attempting to capture images of these elusive flyers. Fortunately, the females were interested in ovipositing, the males keeping guard on a couple of twig perches - one at each end of the pools - actively seeing off any flying insect which approached.
There were three varieties of Dragonfly and three of Damselfly, all photographed with varying success.
Black-tailed Skimmer


Emperor - the largest UK Dragonfly -female ovipositing



Four-spotted Chaser



Common Blue Damselfly and Large Red Damselfly






Emerald Damselfly?

The photography was halted when Pam noticed a large adult Grass Snake slip into the pool at the far side, gradually making its sinuous way towards us. Excellent.


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