The Mating Game!

With so many Migrant Hawkers still around at the weekend enjoying the warm sunny weather, it seemed rude not to enjoy them again so I spent a few hours in their company watching the males defending their territories against any other dragonfly that flew through their area. Unlike some dragonflies which have quite large territories, there were often up to 5 Migrant Hawkers perched up in the reeds really close to each other and at times, they seemed to ignore each other, that was until any females flew through which insured a frenzied chase by the males until one finally managed to grab her. They often returned to the reeds to mate which gave me the chance to try to get some more shots of them and see if I could better my images from last time. As is often the case, sometimes they were facing the wrong way from the sun, reeds in the way or the wrong angles but I found a few pairs where I was able to get into a few good positions and fire off a number of shots. With a few of them, I was able to take my time and get the desired angles required and experiment with different settings which is often not the case when photographing dragonflies.

'Mating' Migrant Hawkers 

It was also interesting to observe how the males on territory where perched. There were a few hanging up in the reeds as you would expect hawkers to do but most were perched horizontally on the reeds and most definitely on the look out. This behaviour seems to be unique to the Migrant Hawkers as I often see them perched in this way but cannot recall other hawkers doing this on territory in quite this fashion.

Migrant Hawker (male)

As well as taking the photos from which I take most pleasure, its learning and observing behaviour like this which continues to draw me into the fascinating life of dragonflies and damselflies. Still a number of photos still to look through so no doubt another post later in the week.