Spotlit

I sent a few hours today at Croome, where it was hot and sunny, and lots of people were sitting around the lake - some with picnics - as we would all have liked to do during August if the weather hadn't been largely hateful. There was also a veritable dragon-fest going on among the dwindling number of remaining species, with Migrant Hawkers and Common Darters especially numerous, and aggressively competitive both with each other and among their own kind.

I've chosen this image to mark the day because I was pleased to have captured it, in quite tricky light and with the Migrant Hawker more reactive and less cooperative than males of this species usually are. I'd prefer to have been slightly more parallel to him, so as to have got the whole length of the abdomen in focus, but overall I'm reasonably happy with the photo.

Despite the presence of dragons I did photograph a few other things today, including a heron fishing, and a Vespula germanica predating a spider. For those of you who like to see predation, I've put a couple of posts on my Facebook page: the heron is here, and the wasp eating the spider is here.