Clot

The synchronised emergence of Large Red Damselflies from our ponds that conspicuously didn't happen six weeks ago when we were hoping and looking for it, seems to be happening now. Today we had four emerge from the wildlife pond, and three, plus a single Azure Damselfly, from the patio pond. R and I spent more time than either of us could really spare this morning going back and forth between the ponds, watching, checking and counting, and discussing the new arrivals as though they were cherished family members, rather than insects moving into the final stage of their lives.

Six of the eight events happened straightforwardly and ended well, with the damselflies leaving the ponds to start their maturation periods - in fact, in two cases we didn't see the emergences at all, but merely the evidence the damsels left behind them of new exuviae appearing today in places where there had been none yesterday. However, the Azure Damselfly and this female Large Red chose their emergence supports badly, and while I'm well aware of the argument for leaving nature to take its course in these situations, I confess that I intervened to rescue them both from their poor life choices.

This Large Red emerged in a narrow gap between this water dropwort stem and a water mint shoot, and as she pumped out her wings I could see that each movement brought the edge of them into contact with the edge of one of the mint leaves. I managed to snip off the mint shoot, but as she continued to pump, a little blob of haemolymph appeared on the wing edge, so it was obvious that some damage had occurred. Luckily the "bleed" clotted or set quite quickly - if you look along the front edge of the wings in this photo, you should be able to see a yellowish lesion about quarter of the way down from their insertion - and the wings continued to expand normally. What we didn't know when I took this, and for quite some time afterwards, was whether the clot had stuck any of her wings together, because she seemed reluctant to move them even when she was buzzed by a hoverfly (or by me). In the end though, the tiny drama ended happily: R and I went off to do something else for a while, and when we came back, she'd gone.

The Azure Damselfly made an even worse job of her eclosure, choosing a stem that was bent over horizontally, and too low to the pond surface for her to expand without her abdomen and wings trailing in the water. In fact, at the point when R noticed her, that's what was happening, and though I lifted and propped the stem very promptly, her wings didn't fully straighten and hardened in an odd alignment. She stayed on her emergence stem for several hours, and when I offered her my finger she climbed onto it rather than flying away. I put her on a shoot of the nearby hawthorn tree and dismissed her from my mind, but during the evening R went out to see if she was still there, and reported that she'd taken sufficient umbrage to flutter off down the garden.

Tonight's extra photo is a male Emperor we saw this afternoon at Compton Verney, which is currently teeming with Odonata, both on and around the lake. It's quite unusual for male Emperors to perch, especially on a hot afternoon, and more especially when they're as fresh as this, but R and I both noticed that this one regularly interrupted his patrols of the lake to rest in this clump of reeds. Having got a bead on him through the foliage, I edged around to try to get a clear sight line, almost but not quite stepping into the lake in the process, and I'd just achieved a clear shot and was squeezing the shutter button... when he took off and disappeared. I sometimes think that dragons are psychic.