Hairy

Zipping past but not so easy to catch in flight; a male hairy dragonfly. 

On the small reeded lake at Croome Park they kept dropping down into the bottom of the vegetation where they would mosey at water level, come up somewhere unexpected, fly for a bit then drop in again. No-one was more surprised than me when I saw this on the download!

This is a smaller darker hawker with a hairy thorax hence it's name and is the first to emerge each year. The males have blue eyes with long brown wing spots whilst the females have brownish eyes. 

The Extra shows them flying in cop over in front of the tree line over the reeds and you can clearly see their differences. They, once in the wheel shoot over and upwards into the trees, do a circuit of the branches and disappear - annoyingly. It was incredibly difficult to get the mating shot with the erratic fast flight close to the bankside vegetation and mating was a rare occurrence as there can't have been that many there. I was pretty thrilled to get these!! 

My other Extra is a Black-tailed Skimmer

A really lovely day at Croome Park with HelenJG  just photographing dragons and damsels in the sun. Perfect.