Willow Heaven!

I was out early this morning at 4.30am where a few minutes later I arrived at Nethergong. After getting ready, I walked up to the gate on the eastern boundary where I intended to look out for any birds passing. It was here that the session took a dramatic turn and the next 4 hours was spent in photographic heaven. As I stood at the gate watching the sun rise, I could hear the buzzing of wet wings in the long grasses. Knowing they was going to be from a dragonfly or damselfly, I took a look in the long grass which was at least waist height and soon found a male Emerald Damselfly covered in dew. I quickly got the camera out of the back and as I prepared to take some photos, another damselfly could be seen climbing up the grass, a Willow Emerald Damselfly, a nationally rare damselfly but seemingly doing well in South East England.

Nethergong Stream

As I took photos of this one, I noticed other Willow Emerald Damselflies resting in the grasses. Knowing that there seemed to be a few around, I spent the next 4 hours walking the grass bank alongside the stream for c100 metres where I found at least 80 Willow Emerald Damselfly, probably quite a few more I suspect.

Willow Emerald Damselfly (female)

I can't really remember the next 4 hours as I was totally engrossed in watching, studying and photographing these superb damselflies, many of them having just emerged and I even found 2 which were in the process of emerging. On quite a few occasions, as I walked through the grasses, groups of Willow Emerald Damselflies would fly up, some landing nearby with others flying to nearby trees.

Willow Emerald Damselfly (female)

A scan of the reeds also revealed a number of Willow Emerald Damselfly exuviae. Its not often that all the factors work out but during the golden hour, the light was superb and I was able to obtain a number of pleasing images showing off their colours. With the time passing by quickly, I packed up and made my way back to the car where walking back, I still encountered Willow Emerald Damselflies. Also seen this morning were c50 Emerald Damselfly, a few Azure and Blue tailed Damselfly and 1 Southern Hawker. I took quite a few images today as you can imagine including one newly emerged Willow Emerald Damselfly with its exuviae which hopefully I shall post in due coarse along with a few other images from the session. 

Willow Emerald Damselfly (male)