Autumn romance

We have the family coming this weekend, and not wanting to rely on tomorrow's supermarket delivery for anything vital to the meal plan, this morning R and I took ourselves and a lengthy shopping list to Stratford. 

I spotted these Migrant Hawkers in a reed bed in the river from up on Lucy's Mill Bridge, but our relative positions weren't great for accurate and descriptive photos. Then the male suddenly took off and flew towards the bank, I think to get out of the eye line of another couple of patrolling males, and for a few seconds I feared I was about to lose them altogether. Luckily they came down again on the edge of the same reed bed, right next to a section of bank that's well-used by dogs for drinking and swimming, and by me for photographing damselflies in the first half of the season. Since then the bankside vegetation has grown up a long way, and I had to push through a lot of nettle to get to the point from which I had a clear view of them - but dragons in cop tend to be more elusive than damsels, and I'd happily endure worse annoyances than a few nettle stings any day of the week, for the chance of capturing an image like this.

Processing photos of Autumn Hawkers in an autumnal reed bed has somehow set this song playing on a loop inside my head. I must be getting sentimental in my old age.