A Week of Two Blues

As the last week in what has been sunniest and driest May in England for over a century drew to a close, our now very parched garden yielded two beautiful blue insects. My first Common Blue butterfly of the season finally materialised, maybe benefitting from Bird’s-Foot Trefoil’s resilience to drought conditions and a male Broad-bodied Chaser dragonfly appeared, grateful perhaps that our pond hasn’t, quite, dried out!

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Common Blue basking in late afternoon sunlight

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Broad-bodied Chaser Dragonfly perching on a dried reed

There's No Place Like Home

I'm not ranging far at all, but sometimes you don't need to.  This lovely female common darter from our wildlife pond posed beautifully on the lavender border next to my patio, right outside my living room french doors!

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Southern Hawker

Photo Of The Month August 2011 - Hovering Southern Hawker Dragonfly Taken: Sole Common Pond, West Berkshire

Its late summer and already the weather is feeling very autumnal. I recently visited one of my favourite secluded dragonfly haunts and found the southern hawkers and common darters still zooming about and dancing over the water.

Hawker dragonflies are a fearless and highly competitive dragonfly species. They spend most of their time in flight hunting out smaller insects as prey. They are also highly competitive. It's beautiful to watch them do acrobatic battles with other dragonflies above the water, quite often there are conflicts between several dragonflies at once, reminiscent of a battle of Britain dogfight.

Like most predators. hawker dragonflies are very curious by nature and quite often one would come right up to hover in front of me for a few seconds before "buzzing" me and zooming off again. This shot was quite a challenge - it was taken handheld using manual focusing on my 180mm macro lens.