Migrant hawker egg laying

After having the boiler serviced, I took the dogs to the Castor backwater and spent a happy hour watching fish swimming in the crystal clear water and dragonflies and damselflies flitting over the reed sweet-grass.

The banded demoiselles were the most numerous , and I spent some time trying to get a good image of one flying. A couple turned out reasonably well, but there's definitely room for improvement! I spotted the oldest scarce chaser that I've ever seen, a truly battered specimen that shouldn't really be out so late in August, as well as quite a few brown and migrant hawkers.

In the 1940's the migrant hawker was an uncommon migrant from southern Europe but it has gradually extended its range from a pioneering breeding population in south-east England. It's still predominantly found to the south and east of a line from South Wales to the Humber, but continues to expand north and west. It's one of the most frequent late summer dragonflies around Peterborough, and can be very numerous, especially when its numbers are boosted by continental migrations. It has benefitted from the burgeoning numbers of gravel pits and reservoirs in south-east England.

I was alerted to the presence of this female migrant hawker by the rustle of her wings. Female dragonflies can lay hundreds of eggs during their adult lives, in batches over a few days or even weeks. Eggs are laid either into plant material (endophytic eggs) or deposited loosely into water (exophytic eggs). The hawkers have scythe-like ovipositors, one of which can be seen at the bottom of this image, and inject their eggs into plant stems or leaves, often well above the surface of the water, a strategy which is thought to limit predation.

The following spring, when water levels have risen, the egg hatches into a larva (also known as a nymph), which moults up to 15 times before emerging as an adult. Unlike most other insects, there is no pupal stage and the transition from larva to adult is known as incomplete metamorphosis. This is not necessarily an annual cycle, since the larva may spend more than a year underwater before emerging as an adult. The adult stage is usually the shortest in the life-cycle and rarely lasts for more than a week or two in Britain.