Southern Hawker factory

The tiny wildlife pond R dug out and installed for me as a Covid lockdown project - it's maybe four feet by three, and about eighteen inches at its deepest point - has suddenly turned into a bit of a Southern Hawker factory. Last Saturday I was super-excited to find three exuviae, and today, following several days of offish weather, I found a fourth. 

This morning I also met what I assume to be one of Saturday's youngsters, an immature male who was hunting around the wild garden. Eventually he landed on a low branch of the oak tree where I could take his photo, and the close-up revealed that his abdomen is severely bent - in a human you'd probably call it a scoliosis - in a way that suggests an emergence problem. Interestingly, the exuvia that didn't make it into Saturday's post was damaged in quite a strange way: the abdomen and all the legs were present, but the head and the top of the thorax were missing. As there was no sign of bird activity, nor of the dragon itself, I thought it likely that the owner had struggled to get out of his larval case, but had forced his way through and succeeded in the end. And as soon as I saw Mr Bendy up close, I thought: Eclosure issue - that could well be Number Three.

Today's exuvia was perfect, and placed quite well on the pond sedge, and rather than collecting it as I usually would I decided to leave it in place, so I could show it to the Boy Wonder, who was due to visit us tomorrow, and explain what it was, and how its owner had transformed from a water-living nymph to an airborne dragon. But it wasn't to be: this evening we got the news that one of the Family B had just tested positive for Covid. R and I were desperately disappointed, but right now we can't take the risk of bringing the plague into the house, so there was no choice: the visit would have to be postponed.

It was about quarter to ten, and I was still grumping around the house, complaining, when I suddenly remembered the teaching project. "AND," I wailed, "I was going to show the Boy that exuvia! And now I can't!!" And then froze, thought, dumped my wine glass on the kitchen table, grabbed a torch, and said, "I'm going to check the pond right now, in case there's another one coming out!"

In the end we both went, which is a good thing, because it was R (always an excellent spotter) who noticed anomalous movement in the pond sedge and said, "What's that?" Having found me a nymph, he marked it while I rushed back to the kitchen for my camera, then provided extra light with his head torch so I could take the first couple of images in this sequence. After that he helped me get my flash unit onto the camera and working, and then, when both flash heads ran out of charge, he went off and found a couple of small battery-powered studio lights and brought them down to the pond so I could keep working.

All of which explains, if it doesn't excuse, the fact that the sequence is a bit ragged, with numerous changes of perspective and lighting - though I've processed quite carefully to try to get as smooth a feel as possible. The fact that I decided to take a quick break back at the house when it seemed as though nothing was going to be happening for a while, and returned to discover that the Hawker had flipped herself out of her case and turned upright in my absence... is nobody's fault but mine.

R: C3, D15.