Better

It was a better day today, weather-wise, and I was also feeling rather less viral. By no coincidence at all, I had a better day with the camera too, so I guess you could call it a triple whammy.

I spent quite a bit of the day working in the garden, dead-heading flowering plants and roughly tidying a couple of overgrown flower beds. I also spent a fair amount of time hunting invertebrates - or in the case of the Southern Hawkers, just standing and admiring their grace and beauty, as they flew around me hunting invertebrates of their own. 

One of the remarkable things about Southern Hawkers is their lack of fear of humans. They will often fly so close to you that you can hear their wings rustling, or even the little 'snick' of their mandibles as they snatch flies in mid-air, and sometimes they will even fly up to you and hover for a second, checking you out, before turning and going off about their own concerns. I was photographing bugs and beetles on a clump of yarrow when this female flew straight past me and gently settled on a viburnum, about a metre from where I was standing. She then stayed quite still and calm for a couple of minutes, while I walked around and photographed her from various angles.

Once I had my shots I thanked her very politely, before going away and leaving her in possession of the shrub border. Dragonflies have no organ of hearing, though its believed that they can sense vibrations, but I think they know when you're being respectful.