Looking For The Right Spot.

My favourite dragonfly must be the female Southern Hawker with its chocolate brown and green colouring.

This morning I saw this female flying around my garden pond on the lookout for the right place to lay her eggs.Although I have had several female hawkers in the garden over the last few seasons I have only observed one ovipositing into some discarded water soldier at the side of the pond. My pond edges do not seem to be ideal for these hawkers as they  prefer to lay into rotting vegetation above the waterline.

Therefore I was very happy to see this one finally start to oviposit into the moss next to the pond.This area of moss has been created by the flap of  liner around the pond  overlapping the edges and being disguised under turf.As the excess water from the pond overflows the turf has been replaced by very moist moss.Good enough it would seem for our hawker.

The eggs would normally now remain where laid until the spring when they will hatch and hopefully the larvae will find their way into the pond.

Emergence Time for the Azures.

After a period of fine,warm, and sunny weather the last few days have been more autumn like with heavy rain and strong winds.Today the sun came out for a while during the afternoon but the wind did not abate.

However it did trigger several damselflies to emerge from my garden pond,crawling up the leaves of the water soldier.The first emergent I saw had not fared very well as its wing seemed to be badly deformed.Happily the remaining Azures were more fortunate.

This is the first batch of tenerals I have witnessed from the pond this season and hopefully there will be many more.