Vagrant

My back, which has been niggling me for about a fortnight now, was so bad when I woke up this morning that it took me nearly an hour to get myself upright, and even then it needed heavy strapping before I could walk without whiffling. If someone else was telling this tale, I'd sigh dramatically, roll my eyes, and tell them to go and get it treated by an osteopath or chiropractor, but in a former life I qualified as an osteopath, and like most people who've spent long years being practised on by fellow-students, I loathe having my back cracked, so... I think I'll just keep waiting for it to decide to magically heal itself, thanks all the same.

My day having gone awry before it even started, only a very major enticement would have got me out of the house and into the car, but Lower Moor Nature Reserve in Wiltshire was rumoured to have both Willow Emerald Damselflies and Lesser Emperors - two species I'd never yet seen - and that, it turned out, was enough. I knew the chances of finding either one were fairly low, but they were clearly considerably better if I went than if I spent the day sitting at home. And though in the event I didn't find a Willow Emerald, that was always the longer shot of the two, and this small failure didn't lessen my absolute triumph at getting not one but two male Lesser Emperors on camera.

As soon as I'd parked the car at Lower Moor this morning I headed for the Dragonfly Café (purveyor of the best carrot cake in several counties), because recent dragon alerts, and photos in various Facebook groups, have all mentioned the lake by the café terrace as the best place to look for Lesser Emperors. At the weekend there was a pair ovipositing on an old tree branch by the café and being harassed by a spare male, and I've seen so many photos of this scene that I think the massed photographers must have resembled a football crowd, but today the terrace was quiet. I ordered my coffee and cake, walked outside, sat down at a spare table, and immediately saw my first ever Lesser Emperor, hovering about ten metres away. By the time I'd turned on my camera he'd moved much further away, of course, and then there was a hiatus because an Emperor arrived and cleared the whole area, but eventually the Emperor moved on and the Lesser Emperor returned, zooming back and forth along the terrace as he searched for a female. My second photo tonight is of this male, and though it's much more cropped than I'd like, I'm still pretty pleased with it.

I took the main image later in the day, after quartering the rest of the reserve in a vain hunt for the elusive Willow Emerald, Shortly after I sat down with my second (cake-free) coffee, the female Emperor arrived and began ovipositing, and shortly after that I realised that she was being buzzed repeatedly by a male Lesser Emperor. I suppose you can't blame a boy for trying. The Emperor ignored him, beyond some irritable fluttering of her wings when he got too close, and after a minute or so he realised that he was getting nowhere, and left. It was only when I saw my photos on a big screen that I realised this was a different male - older and more worn than this morning's, but still clearly highly motivated to find a receptive female and pass on his DNA. It would have been nice to have seen this happen, because the books still seem reluctant to describe the Lesser Emperor as resident in the UK, and only evidence of successful breeding will change that, but I wasn't surprised not to see a female today, because they tend to stay away from water unless they have a batch of eggs that are mature and ready to be fertilised.