Shades On

Warning this post contains sexually explicit material

(That should get the number of hits up)

As you will have gathered from my previous posts, I am very much a beginner when it comes to dragonflies, but as the local birdlife is pretty quiet at this time of year, I have thrown my lot in with the dubious crowd that (seriously) study these wee beasties, in an attempt to broaden my horizons.

Having purchased the bible – Field Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies of Great Britain and Ireland by Steve Brook (illustrations by Richard Lewington) – I started the process of (mentally) ticking the species I see and recognise and where possible try to get a half decent photograph for future reference, personal gratification and most importantly to try and wind up my expert odo spotting mates at FoHESC.  Unfortunately the latter usually backfires when I proudly display my picture, but have to follow it up with, "I like this picture - but what is it?"

At first it seemed to be going well, Hairy dragonfly – tick, Four-spotted chaser – tick, Emperor – tick, a piece of cake this dragonfly business, then the wheels started to fall off. Clearly the dragonflies had not read the book, had failed to properly adhere to the designated colour scheme or were in fact colour-blind.

 Four-spotted Chaser, very numerous at the moment and real posers

Males and females have different livery, OK, we can cope with that, although it doesn’t help that males often start off pretty darn similar in colour to the ladies. Then a la David Bowie, the boys undergo a number changes in persona, before arriving at the finished article (I assume David is now the finished article). Let me try and demonstrate my confusion, with a few pictures of Ruddy Darters (No, I’m not being disparaging – that’s what Sympetrum sanguineum are called).

The first picture is of a female (I think) but when immature the male looks very similar indeed.

This picture shows the beginning of the colour change in a male but according to the guide he is not yet mature.

Whoa! – immature my foot, big boy’s come of age and doing his funky stuff with Mrs Ruddy D in what I understand is the tandem position (please don’t try this at home).

The pair remained coupled and flew in tandem over the pond surface whilst the female dipped her ovipositor into the water at frequent intervals to lay her eggs, these should hatch into larvae in a few days and emerge as dragonfly in about a year.

Returning to the same spot a couple of hours later I found that the gent was really living up to his name and had become a bright red. Of course I cannot be certain that it was the same dragonfly, although in view of the small numbers of Ruddy Darters in that area I think it may have been. The weather was very warm and sunny – maybe that hastens the colour change – or does the act of mating kick off the change? Hopefully someone will enlighten me.

Male Ruddy Darter (Sympetrum sanguineum) in full colour

It was nice also to observe that I was not the only one looking for flies that afternoon. This Reed Warbler seems to have amassed a pretty impressive collection, which I assume were en route to junior.

If you enjoy any of my photographs or would like to see more, please click on the link to my flickr site at the top right of this page.