The Autumn Damselfly

With Autumn moving ever nearer and a number of species season already over, its left to a few species to carry on into Autumn including one of my favourites, the Willow Emerald Damselfly. I have probably spent more time with this species than any other and never tire of watching, studying and photographing this species. Having returned from a week in Cornwall at the weekend, I needed to get my Willow fix so made a very brief visit to Nethergong on Sunday morning where the plan was to see if I could see and photograph a few Willow Emerald Damselflies, ideally showing that autumn is on its way. The leaves starting to already die off show some lovely vibrant colours which make for some superb background colours and it was this that I wanted to try to capture. Despite the early hour of my visit, I managed to find a few at rest in various areas but it was a little more tricky to get the subtle backroad colours I desired but after a brief walk around, I eventually found a few individuals which showed the autumnal feel I wanted. It was then a case of getting the camera settings correct and moving the angle ever so slightly between shots provided some nice different background colours hopefully showing that autumn is on its way. Thankfully, the Willow Emerald Damselfly should be on the wing for a while yet, enabling me to make the most of my visits in seeing and photographing this little stunner.

 

Willow Emerald Damselfly (Chalcolestes viridis) - male