Dragonfly day

Perfect art nouveau moment out in the garden this morning - dragonfly and wisteria... Click to embiggen...

Looking it up, I think this is a Migrant Hawker (Aeshna mixta). I love the sheer quantity of natural history information there is on the web, most of it from keen amateurs. Apparently this is one of the species which is on the rise; I hope so. There were three flying around the garden this morning, anyway, the light glinting off them. (Ladybird included for scale...)

I was reminded of when I was at Loughborough, and occasionally we drove out to a country pub with a pond which had a mass of Banded Demoiselles (Calopteryx splendens) flying around it. They were quite spectacular; the black spots on the wings really showed the flight motion...

There were no 3:15 photos last week - all too similar to the previous week's despite lots of weeding having been done! Hope to have some up this afternoon - I'm on holiday this week...