After all the moaning I’ve been doing about the dearth of dragons around here this year, today turned out to be a Very Good Day Indeed.
R and I were tidying the garden this afternoon, in preparation for the family coming to stay at the weekend, when I spotted the fresh female Common Darter in the first extra perching on a cane. She was only the second specimen I’d seen this year, the first having been at Paxton Pits back in June, so I was delighted. I was sitting on the arm of the nearby garden bench, photographing her, when she was approached and buzzed by this second female. The new arrival landed on another cane a few feet away, and promptly took up this obelisk pose, to reduce the amount of direct sun falling on her and protect herself from overheating. A third individual then arrived, and having tried and failed to displace the first two from their perches, settled (rather sulkily, I thought) on a clump of montbretia.
Three fresh female Common Darters suddenly appearing on the same day spoke to me of a mass emergence, so R and I went to check our ponds to see if we could find any Darter exuviae. We didn’t, but as soon as we reached the wildlife pond R pointed out the truly impressive exuvia in my second extra, which has since been identified by an expert in one of the Odonata groups on Facebook as a female Southern Hawker. I now keep finding myself thinking back rather emotionally to the summer of 2020 – a great dragon season – when this pond (which we’d only just installed) was visited almost daily by ovipositing Southern Hawkers. This species has a two-year life cycle, so our new emerger will have developed from one of those 2020 eggs. R’s comment on seeing the size of her exuvia was “I’m not surprised we haven’t had many damselflies out of here this year.”
By the way, the emergence didn’t take place at this angle: when the iris leaf was still in situ it was vertical, but I cut it out so I could add the exuvia to my collection. The only dragonfly I know of that’s said to be able to emerge horizontally is the Common Clubtail, and never having seen one performing this feat I can’t quite imagine how they do it. All the others eclose vertically; I assume that hanging in space, once they’ve extricated themselves from their larval carapace, allows gravity to help them expand.
