Vibrant Hawker

The next time I find myself moaning about August not being as summery it used to be back when I were a lad, I need to remind myself of days like this one. I thought I'd just pop over to Croome this morning, for a wander around the lake and a few dragon photos, and I ended up staying four hours, taking over four hundred photos, and coming back slightly the worse for heat and sunshine.

I am, of course, still trying to deal with all those photo files, but as I was working on them this evening, this one stood out as being a rather dramatic portrait. Which is gratifying, because I had to lean so far out over the island reed bed to get this angle that I nearly fell in the channel taking it. Migrant Hawkers are sometimes described as being a little drab, at least by comparison with their Southern Hawker cousins, but I think my image shows that when a fresh male is nicely lit, he can be positively vibrant.