OUT AND ABOUT WITH MAX: Tiny Dragons

Max spent most of the summer doing his A-levels, which is - I suppose - a perfectly valid reason for him not having done any bloggo stuff for yonks. However, he has managed to sneak out a few times to sit in his car and listen to Tarkus with a peculiar look on his face, and occasionally to do a little bit of bird watching. He usually takes his camera with him, and over the last few months has built up a fantastic library of images of the wildlife of the Wells region of Somerset. Here are some of them....

I usually take pictures of birds. OK, fine; these are not birds. They do both fly, though, which is how I am justifying this set of pictures. These are all species from reed beds in North Somerset, showing a wide diversity of Odonata in the area.

To start we have the widespread and adaptable large red damselfly; a large, obvious damselfly, which is one of the first British species to emerge. Our garden pond has only hatched out 3 adults (that I have seen) of this species this year, and they have all zipped off to new areas, which is a shame.

Now we have what could be a very rare species, the Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly, Ischnura pumilio. I am fairly sure that this is an I. pumilio because the blue area on the tail looks more like the markings on I. pumilio than the more common Ischnura elegans. This is a species mainly found in the southwest, but it can be found in scattered isolated colonies throughout the British Isles.










One of the Coenagrion genus, now; I cannot identify it to species level as I am not that familiar with the different species in the genus - there are 5 different species of Coenagrion in the UK and all of them are blue with black banding! If anyone has any idea what this mating pair are then I would be very grateful.















Lying apart from most of the other British damselflies in the family Calopteryigidae, the Banded Demoiselle male is a stunning insect. They have a strange wobbly way of flying, flaunting their wings to potential mates, and to rivals to show that this particular area is theirs, and any other Odonata will have to fight for it! This is the only family of damselflies in Britain that have coloured wings so this, plus their large size and odd flight makes identifying them a piece of cake.

At last, a dragonfly! And what a species! Anax imperator is Britain’s heaviest dragonfly, and one of our biggest insects. This is a male in his prime. Males rarely stop flying, eating prey on the wing to keep control of their territory. However, their large size makes them an obvious target for predators, and the lower image shows this very dragonfly minutes after I had taken photos of it, being eaten by a Hobby, which had zipped in front of the hide I was sat in and grabbed the poor Emperor in front of my eyes. Strange thing, life.…

And another dragonfly. The Broad-Bodied Chaser is a funny-looking species. They are very wide and short, but they have a very fast, erratic flight, which belies their appearance. This is a female; males have a bright blue abdomen. They are only found in the south of Britain.

These are Four-Spotted Chasers. Looking at this similar species; the odd shape of the above species’ body becomes apparent. These and other chasers are commonly found using the same perch and vicious fights often break out over who gets to sit on what seems to be a very ordinary blade of dead grass. But sometimes they are happy to co-own a perch, as this photo shows with 6 individual chasers sat on it.