I took a trip down the Fosse to Lower Moor this morning, hoping to find one of the Norfolk Hawkers currently on the reserve. Sadly I didn’t manage that, and no-one else I chatted with had seen one today either, but I did see a good number of Lesser Emperors – significantly more, in fact, than the number of Emperors I managed to find.
The male in my main image came and patrolled the lake by the café as I was enjoying coffee and cake on the terrace, causing me to abandon a piece of carrot cake half-eaten as I leapt to the rail with the camera, which counts as quite a significant event. He was pretty fast, and I’m slower than I used to be, so initially I had to wind the zoom in and shoot at 100mm to get him in the frame, but after a few minutes I got my eye in and was able to start extending the lens again – though sadly I was only up to about 200mm when the dragon decided to go off and try his luck somewhere else. If I’d had another minute or two with him he’d be much bigger in the frame, but even though he’s smaller here than I’d like he is sharp, and I’m happy enough with that.
If you don’t know this species, the Lesser Emperor is a little smaller than the Emperor (averaging around 68mm long, compared with about 75mm), and while the markings are a little variable, this combination – a bright blue saddle topped with a thin yellow band at the base of an otherwise dull abdomen, along with a brown thorax, light face and green eyes – is absolutely diagnostic. Females may look almost exactly like this, though with a thicker abdomen that has a clearer black line running down the midline, but not infrequently they’re brighter than the males, with either blue or olive green patches along the sides of the abdomen. On the other hand the female who flew past me this afternoon, who may have been quite elderly, was almost entirely dark brown. If you compare this Lesser Emperor with the Emperor I posted a couple of weeks ago, you’ll see that they look quite different.
The other dragon that was present in good numbers today was the Brown Hawker: several individuals of both sexes were patrolling the paths and rides, and while I was at the café two mature females came and laid eggs quite close to the terrace, in a branch floating on the surface of the lake. My second image shows a very fresh female, whom I inadvertently put to flight out of long grass in the Sandpool orchard. Luckily she simply flew up into the nearest plum tree and hung there, giving me a better photo opportunity than if she’d stayed in the grass.
R: L2, C10, D41.
