Monday 16 February 2015

Testing Id Challenge!

With the kids playing in the garden, the wife repainting garden chairs, I had an hour to myself in the warm conservatory where I wanted to photograph a dragonfly nymph which at first I thought was a Black tailed Skimmer. With the sun shining I was able to use more natural light today although I did use some flash and some added background colours as well.  As some will know, recognizing adult dragonflies is quite easy but the larvae stage can be anything but easy as I have found out. After putting the nymph into a small pot I had a look through the magnifying glass to get a few key features but some didn't fit for Black tailed Skimmer. This individual seemed to show labial palps with deep serrations when viewed from front on as a number of the photos show. Although hard to sometimes see, the tips of the eyes seem to be lying above the level of the top of the head and although not the best shots, there seems to be no dorsal spine on S9? With all this evidence, I believe that this is now a Broad bodied Chaser nymph, a dragonfly which I have seen a lot from where I found the nymph. I shall have another tank session tonight in the kitchen where I can hopefully play around with the light and get a few of these features photographed. If anyone has any comments on the id or I need correcting on the species, please by all means let me know as i'm hopefully learning all the time and appreciate any help. 









Broad bodied Chaser Nymph?

3 comments:

  1. Looking at my Dragonfly Larvae book Marc,
    I would agree with your id as a Broad Bodied Chaser, but i'm no expert, I just look at the book info!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Warren. So much to learn about them and the photography challenge that comes with it as well.

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  2. BBC is in the glass container, didn't you do well.

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