A Couple of Nymph Firsts

With a quite mild afternoon, I decided after work to visit a small lake near home to see if I could find any dragonfly and damselfly nymphs. Whilst I have seen good numbers of odonata here, I have never really looked for larvae here so was interested what I would find. It wasn't long until I caught the first few Common Blue Damselfly nymphs and ended up with around 15 of these but then I caught 2 very interesting nymphs which I didn't recognise at all. They were much bigger and longer than the Common Blue Damselfly and appeared quite stripey on the abdomen. They had a very striking pattern on the caudal lamellae which most of the time can give away the identification of the species. After returning home with one of these individuals I looked at a few photos in books and the internet and confirmed the nymph as a Red eyed Damselfly, a nymph first for me with this species. I set about trying to capture a few shots as ever of this species and after setting the tank up and spending about 30 minutes firing off shots, I ended up with a few nice images of this striking damselfly nymph.

Red eyed Damselfly Nymph

My second first happened last night, the 3rd March when I went to check out one of the tanks in the evening to see if the hawker nymphs were hunting. I was amazed to see an almost white Emperor Dragonfly nymph looking at me and below it was a freshly moulted skin. Whilst I knew that dragonflies moult between 5-18 times until they are ready to emerge, I have never seen this before so was amazed to witness this for myself. Having read a little on this, the nymph is white on moulting due to the pigment not darkening yet, this often takes a few hours for this to happen. Yet another education on these superb little insects. I did try for a few shots but this tank is plastic and as the flash went off, it showed up every scratch on the surface, not very good to look at. I have removed the small skin so may try and photograph it in the next few days if I get a chance.

Red eyed Damselfly Nymph