Target Acquired

For the last few days towards lunch time, we have been visited by this chap. He's a male Southern Migrant Hawker - quite a big dragonfly then, but not as big as the Emperor Dragonfly, which he is sometimes confused with. 

When he visits he overflies the pond area for some time before disappearing off for his next appointment elsewhere in the neighbourhood.  It seems to have become a bit of routine.

Inevitably as soon as he arrives I race off to grab the camera, change the lens, locate the lens adapter, (to enable me to use the Nikon F lens on the Z mount) and then race back to the pond busily changing settings as I go, desperately trying not to trip up or drop the camera in the process. 

When I get back to the pond he's generally still there, but only for long enough to laugh at me as he waves good bye and then disappears.

So you might have thought that I would have the camera ready, but when I've tried that he never turns up....

But today he stayed longer and I managed a number of in focus shots of him, but frustrating always from behind.  He would overfly and hover for a few seconds, always looking the other way.  I could swear it was deliberate. 

The camera with the long lens weighs a tad under 3.5kg, so its heavy to hand hold and I was just about to give it up and to settle for the shots that I had.  But then just before he flew off he presented me with this broadside view which I grabbed - one photographic ambition for 2020 finally satisfied.

:-)