R and I have both been a bit under the weather recently – we were supposed to have been going to Cardiff on Saturday, for L’s animation festival and to see the family, but had to cry off. Today though I felt well enough to risk a day out, and I decided to drive down to Wiltshire, in search of early dragons.
I hadn’t even reached the section of boardwalk along the edge of Cottage Lake where I know the Downy Emeralds like to make the tricky transition from aquatic to airborne existence, when I spotted my first of the day, hanging from its larval exuvia on the side of the safety rail. Its wings were fully inflated, but it was still elongating its abdomen, and it was some time before it became clear that it was a male. In the meanwhile though, I’d checked along the rest of the rail and found a partly emerged individual on the other side, with its head, legs, thorax and tiny crinkled wings eclosed and hanging upside-down, while most of its abdomen was still held inside its larval exoskeleton.
At this stage, when they’re resting from the exertion it’s cost them to get this far, and waiting for their thoracic cuticle and legs to harden up enough to bear the strain of the next stage of the process, Odonata are terribly vulnerable to accidental damage or predation, and I always feel quite nervous watching them. Which to be fair is probably rather less concerned than they feel with a huge potential predator getting in their faces, but they can’t rush the process however much they might want to, and neither can I. So for the next hour I walked back and forth between the two dragons, checking how they were doing, taking photos at intervals, and warning other people who came along the boardwalk against getting too close to them. I’ve included three images of the younger of the pair, flipping its body up out of the hanging back-bend in which I first saw it, grasping its exuvia with its front and middle legs, and then wriggling its abdomen free. At this point the ultimate shape of the abdomen wasn’t apparent, but I already knew it was a female because I could see her ovipositor.
Shortly after this the male individual who’d emerged earlier, having realised that he’d eclosed on the shadier side of the rail, laboriously hauled himself up onto the top, turned his back to the sun, and lowered himself over the far edge. Up till then he’d been having difficulty with his left hind wing, which was reluctant to move, but after just a few seconds in full sunshine he was able to get everything working and lift off into the trees. I continued to watch the female until she was fully inflated and looking perfect, and then left her to finish drying and walked on around the reserve. By the time I went back to check on her, an hour or so later, she’d gone.
Out on the reserve I failed to find the Hairy Dragonfly a couple of other people had seen at the corner of Mallard Lake, but every few seconds a mature Downy Emerald would fly overhead, and by the time I got to the birch wood at Sandpool they were everywhere I looked. The problem with Downies is that their cryptic colouring allows them to blend into foliage as soon as they perch, and on several infuriating occasions I found one by unknowingly walking right up to it and putting it to flight. If I’d had binoculars with me I’d have been able to scan ahead more effectively, but I’d decided to bring both cameras (which on balance was the right decision), and thinking that was enough to be dealing with, I’d left my bins in the car. I was in the process of deciding that I now needed to head back to the car park and swap the macro for the binoculars, when the handsome male in my main image skimmed past me and flew around behind some bushes – and when he didn’t reappear I edged round after him veeeery slooooowly, and spotted him hanging from a dead stem, in a lovely position for having his portrait done. For the second time in a week I instructed myself: Don’t mess this up – and happily, I didn’t. When he’s fully mature those eyes will be a quite startling jade green colour, but I think even now he’s pretty gorgeous.
R: L2, C8, D18.
