Azure Damselfly Emerges

With a slightly cooler day today but when the sun was out it was quite warm in the back garden, I took a few looks at the pond to see if any damselflies were emerging. Around mid morning I could see a Large Red Damselfly was in the middle of emerging from a sheltered stem in the pond so I watched its progress for a while and while watching, I nearly missed another damselfly starting to crawl up one of the carefully positioned stems. Unlike the dark Large Red Damselfly nymphs, this was very light in colour and used the stem to hide well whenever I tried to get a look. I decided to get the camera ready and after preparing food and drinks, I settled in for hopefully some emergence action. I let it climb up and settle itself down into position before I moved closer with the camera. After preparing settings which incidentally where AV mode, ISO 400, f8 and speed around 600, I then spent the next 30 minutes or so taking a series of photographs of the emergence and I was not disappointed with the spectacle or the photos I managed to obtain. I wasn't too sure which species had emerged but having looked at books, spoken to a few people and taking a few more shots a few hours later when the damselfly had some colour on it, I have come to the conclusion that it is an Azure Damselfly, my first of the year. Please correct me though if I am wrong. As mentioned in earlier posts, it won't always be this easy with photos but i'm not complaining at the moment, just thankful of the chance to watch and photograph this mostly unseen moment of nature. Also today, the Brown Hawker nymph which I have in a large tank in the garden moulted it skin today, its certainly grown a bit. I will hopefully take a few shots of the skin throughout the weekend.

Azure Damselfly Emerging