Demoiselle delight

I think there's something luscious about a very fresh demoiselle, when the wings are still perfect, and soft enough to be reflective. I find it quite hard to think of them as the common British species they are, because they look so exotic. 

I often photograph Banded Demoiselles by Lucy's Mill Bridge in Stratford, which takes a lot of foot traffic, and people regularly stop to see what I'm pointing the camera at and say things like, "Oh wow! What is that?! I've never seen one before - it's amazing!!" Though generally unsociable, I'm always happy to see other people falling for the charms of demoiselles, and I absolutely empathise with their astonishment that they could have overlooked something so gorgeous up to that moment, because for the first half-century of my life I never noticed them either. So over the years I've had some very pleasant chats about these creatures, and even seen some of my interrogators summon other people they know, so as to share their new-found delight. When they leave, I always smile to myself and wonder if they're going to discover, as I did, that Banded Demoiselles are a gateway drug to an absolute obsession with Odonata.