I had a 'wellbeing' day off work Friday where I spent most of the day touring a few Kent sites to see some of the rarer species that Kent has to offer. The plan was to visit Cliffe RSPB for Southern Emerald Damselfly, West Kent for Golden ringed Dragonfly and Hothfield Common for Keeled Skimmer. In very hot conditions, I was successful in seeing all the target species but this post will feature my first stop of the day to look for the Southern Emerald Damselfly at Cliffe. I arrived at 08:00 and walked the 30 minutes to one of the areas where they are usually seen. Frustratingly, there were quite a few livestock in the fields and the farmers were not too far away, so I couldn't really check some of the ditches that I normally would have. I spent a couple of hours searching some of the dried up ditches where I managed to find 3 Southern Emerald Damselfly. I think these have to be my favourite damselfly, stunning to look at and quite rare nationally as well. With the macro lens on, I then set about trying to get a few images to show off this species and after finding a showy individual, I was able to move in and spend some time photographing from different angles. The bi-coloured pterostigma stood out well with the eye initially when I first found them and is a good identification feature if you are unsure of your larger Emerald damselflies. With c300 photos taken and the temperature getting warmer, I decided to make the journey back to the car and move on to the second site of the day. I will probably post some more shots of the Southern Emerald Damselflies in due coarse as there are hopefully a number of other pleasing images to share.
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