About to embark on its first flight

The little backdoor pond has really come up trumps again this morning, as evidenced by this freshly emerged Southern Hawker in freshly minted condition.

If you look closely above the insect, you will see the foot of its exuvia (or larval skin) just poking out around the leaf.  The exuvia itself is firmly clamped to the other side of the leaf.  The dragon has crawled out of the pond, up the leaf and then emerged, moving around to the front of the leaf at that point to dry its wings in readiness for flight.  It will spend its next few weeks around tree canopies feeding, while it matures in readiness for breeding.

I was busy washing the car first thing, (there was an awful lot of mud on and under it), so I missed the emergence itself, but I was delighted to find the dragon waiting for me when I'd finished.  It quite made my day.  I took some care with this shot to try to get an image that had all parts of the dragon nicely sharp and in focus.   :-)