Dragons be gone!

I think we can safely say that's it for this year and no more Dragons until next Spring. I won't remember 2012 with particular affection and it certainly won't go down as a particularly good year for Damsels and Dragons due to the high rainfall.

The highlight was undoubtedly our Naturetrek holiday to Sardinia, thank you Andy and Gerald, which my long-suffering wife bore with such good grace whilst her hubby crawled around in the undergrowth. The weather was ideal, the hotels were good, the guides were good company and knowledgeable and there was a lively mix of people on the trip. We only saw 14 different Dragons and 8 Damsels but the locations were good and we got very good views. We also saw a huge number of birds and an impressive list of Butterflies.

Debbie and I also got away for two weeks in Cyprus and whilst the selection was not extensive, mostly Red veined Darters, we also saw a few Violet Dropwings which I find very difficult to get a good photograph of so it was good to have a bit of practice.

In the UK Graham and I managed to get in a superb day at Smallhanger where again the variety wasn't great but the views we got of Black Darters, a female Emperor and any number of Emerald Damsels made it a great day.

UK list this year consists of:
6 species of Damsels
12 species of Dragons.

Probably the worst year for a while and even the emergences from the pond were way down on last year with 1 Common Red Damsel and 12 Southern Hawkers (down from 19 last year).

I have started to get to grips with Lightroom and sorting through my images but this will take a while but in the meantime here are a few of this years efforts.

I'm back!

Doesn't time fly when you are overworked and running around all over the country? It doesn't seem possible but I haven't been able to post anything since June due to work getting in the way.

Despite my complaints I have managed to get around and see a few Dragons and other species over the last few months. The highlight was probably a week in Sardinia with Naturetrek on a Specialist Dragon holiday with Andy McGeeney as the Dragonfly specialist. His knowledge of Dragons is undoubtedly unparallelled as opposed to his knowledge of the purpose of the steering wheel and the brake pedal in a car which needs work!

We did get good photos of the Yellow Veined Skimmer which Andy assured us was a rare visitor to Sardinia. He is also responsible for me upgrading to a 5D. I had always held the view that once you reach 12mp there is no point in going higher unless you are going to blow an image up to the size of a house. Once I saw the quality of images on the back of his camera, however, that was enough for me, and once you see your own 21mp images on your computer you will never go back. The full sensor is also superb and I don't miss the 1.6 crop at all.

If macro is your bag have a look at a full sensor camera, the quality will amaze you.

Graham (venerated elder brother) and I have also been trying to improve our UK list despite the best attempts of the Great British weather to thwart us at every turn. We did not get much variety in 2012 but have managed to get some very good views and pictures particularly of Emerald Damsels and Black Darters mostly at Smallhanger.

It surprised me that some of the larger Dragons such as Golden-ringed were out and about in what seemed to be far too cold weather but it was good to have our persistence rewarded.

One query for anyone daft enough to still be reading this dirge; has anyone experience ambush behaviour amongst larvae? I was sat watching a Southern Hawker larvae hiding partly beneath a Pond Lily leaf and striking whenever it calculated a fly had landed close enough on an adjacent leaf. In the 25 minutes I watched it caught 1 fly in 3 attempts. Anybody else with enough time to waste staring into a pond.

I still have a lot of work to do on my images but will gradually get them updated over the next few weeks. Lets face it with the evenings drawing in there will not be much else to keep me out of mischief!

To tide you over here are a few pictures to whet your appetite.

 

 

 

 

 

More to follow once I have recovered from writing this blog!