First Damselflies of The Year - 12th May, 2016

For the past couple of years I've had an increasing interest in dragonflies and damselflies. This interest has been given a real boost over recent months by the inspirational blog of Marc Heath, who resides in Kent (the south-east corner of England, for my overseas visitors not familiar with our geography). You can find Marc's blog here - http://bing.com/

With the first damselflies to emerge in these parts being Large Red Damselflies, I'd been hoping for some fine weather to go and check these out at Rutland Water. On Thursday 5th May, I'd had a brief glimpse of one as I headed to the hide to start my turn of duty on the Osprey Project, but duty came first and I didn't find one after I finished.

On Thursday 12th I was out with pal John, and one of our main objectives was to try and find some damselflies - the other being to see some Little Owls. We took our usual owling route on the way to Rutland Water, and failed miserably on the Little Owl front.

Arriving at the Egleton side of Rutland Water, we refreshed ourselves with an ice cream and headed to the nearby dipping pond. I soon spotted a small pale damselfly which came up from the grass ahead of me and flew up into a tree. I'd not managed to identify it as it flew, and I still couldn't when it landed. The nearest I could get to it was about 5 or 6 metres. I was expecting Large Red Damselfly, but the eyes show no signs of stripe, and the thorax markings seem wrong. I think this may be a teneral male Azure Damselfly. Any observations on its identification will be gratefully received!

? Azure Damselfly (Coenagrion puella) ? (teneral male?) - Rutland Water Egleton Reserve

We saw no other damselflies here, and I was hoping for Hairy Dragonfly too! The damselfly already seen moved further into the curve of the leaf that it was on - and stayed there. We called it time and headed round to the visitor centre at Lyndon. Here we found people eagerly staring at the TV screen in the hope of catching a hatching Osprey.

Having had a quick chat, we stood by the pond in front of the visitor centre.

Until now, my interest in dragonflies and damselflies has been in observing and photographing the adults. However, Marc Heath's work has inspired me to take more interest in the pre-adult stages, and I found myself looking for the exuvia (the skin left when the dragonfly makes the transition from nymph to adult). I soon found one - then another - and then another! There were quite a few around. I think these were all of Large Red Damselfly, but I've still got a lot to learn! The pond is, wisely, fenced off, so these too were somewhat distant shots - all at  2 metres distance or further.

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) (exuvia) - Rutland Water Lyndon Reserve

A partially emerged Large Red Damselfly was then spotted. I'm not sure if this one was just resting or the emergence had failed as I detected absolutely no movement from this during the half hour or so that we were there.

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) (emerging) - Rutland Water Lyndon Reserve

I'd been almost totally ignoring the possibility of adults, but John had found them! So a few poor images were obtained. I believe that this first one, hiding in the shade, was a female - forma fulvipes

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula f. fulvipes) (female) - Rutland Water Lyndon Reserve

These are of males of the species.

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) (male) - Rutland Water Lyndon Reserve

We'd left it a little late to be visiting this spot, and by 16h30 the sun was off most of the pond, so we then set off to try and photograph fishing Osprey before setting back homeward to look for Little Owls.

I'm sorry for the poor standard of photography in this post, but conditions (mainly those of distance and light direction) were somewhat less than ideal. The subject matter was, however, an important milestone in my growing interest in the odonata.

My thanks, again, to Marc Heath for the inspiration - I shall strive to do better in future!

Thank you for dropping by.