A UK First?

With the Dainty Damselfly season getting underway at the end of May, I made a trip down to Sandwich Bay last Friday (3rd June) to see if any were on the wing. Arriving about 10am in sunny but quite breezy conditions I spent a while walking around the pool checking for any signs of damselfly life. A few Azure and Blue tailed Damselfly were noted along with a few newly emerged unidentified damselflies making their maiden flights from the pool. With no obvious signs I then started checking the vegetation where I soon found a few teneral male and female Dainty Damselfly. I spent some time making sure I was comfortable with the id features before taking a number of photos. The more I looked the more I found and with some thorough searching around the pool and nearby meadow, I soon found at least 50 Dainty Damselfly including c10 adult males. I spent some time with them taking more photos which I shall post in due coarse but it was an event back at the pool which made my day. Having trawled the internet for images of emerging Dainty Damselfly of which I cannot find any from the UK, I decided to have a good look around to see whether I could find any damselflies emerging. A few were found a little too far out for photos but after a thorough search, I found a damselfly which had just left the water and looked like it was about to emerge. I was not sure at all whether this was going to be a Dainty Damselfly but thought I would gamble and set myself up in a position I could capture a few photos. I tried sitting down but the angle was not good and the only way of achieving some shots worthy of use was to lay on my belly on the waters edge and hope I didn't get a soaking. After going through some final adjustments, both the damselfly and I were ready for action. The caudal lamellae looked quite good for Dainty so I thought I had a good chance of hitting the jackpot. Over the next hour I was able to witness the emergence of the damselfly and thankfully all went well. It's just a magical experience watching this happen in front of your eyes and as the damselfly pumped its wings up, I was able to get my first sight of the pterostigma which made me very happy when I saw they were twice as long as wide. I had indeed photographed a Dainty Damselfly emerging and this was also confirmed by the shape of the females pronotum which is tri-lobed. It made me wonder if anyone else in the UK has ever photographed the whole emergence of the Dainty or was I the first to have been lucky enough to have photographed this. Either way, it's an absolute pleasure to be able to share the images of this lovely experience. I must be honest and say if it wasn't for the fact that they are Dainty Damselfly photos emerging that I would have probably deleted them. Lots of out of focus parts in the shots which don't make me too happy due to the angle I was laying at but nonetheless, I am obviously over the moon to have captures a very rare sight indeed. My next post will hopefully show off some nice mature male Dainty Damselflies once I have finished editing them. I will be returning again over the weekend and with the weather looking promising, I'm hopeful of a few more encounters, photos and magical experiences. 

Dainty Damselfly (Coenagrion scitulum) - female emerging 

Dainty Damselfly (Coenagrion scitulum) - female showing tri-lobed pronotum 

Dainty Damselfly (Coenagrion scitulum) - female showing pterostigma (twice as long as wide)