Female Hairy Dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) Emerging

With some lovely warm weather in the past few days, it's been no surprise that a few of my reared Hairy Dragonflies have started to emerge from my garden pond. I have been out to the pond most nights where I have seen a few with their heads and back of thorax out of the water whilst clinging to some stems. Its seems that when they start to change their breathing over, that they will try to emerge within the next 3 days weather depending. Having looked at the pond last night as it was getting dark, I could see one of the nymphs quite a way out of the water and was pretty sure that it would try to emerge. I went back out a little later and this time the nymph had climbed up the stem and was starting to go through the process of seeing whether this site was suitable for emerging. This normally includes thrashing of the abdomen to make sure their is enough clearance for when the wings start to expand. With a perfect night, no wind and quite mild, I was soon getting the camera, tripod, blanket to lay on and some food and drink ready for the shift. With the neighbours alerted to more probable flashing going to be taking place, I settled in and waited in the darkness. I try to keep at a distance whilst the nymph is going through the motions and slowly move in when the nymph, prior to emerging seems to go through a static period of some time. With a little moving of the pot to obtain a good angle and a few tester shots, I was soon eagerly awaiting the emergence. Its wasn't long until I could see the thorax starting to swell and then splitting. The next few hours where then spent out in the darkness taking shots every now and then of the various stages. At one point as can be seen in the photos, there seemed to be a ball of fluid at the back of the head which did concern me but this seemed to have disappeared this morning when I was up early and back out to the pond to collect the nymph. As I have mentioned before, although I like to rear some nymphs through the winter and photograph them emerging, it's also important that I return them back to the site that I found the nymph so they can continue their lives normally. After a few minutes drive, I was at Nethergong where already warm, I released the dragonfly in a bush next to the large pond. Fingers crossed that she has a good season and manages to mate at some point to carry on the cycle of life for this species. As ever, an amazing spectacle to watch and photograph and hopefully a few more species will emerge soon giving me the chance to photograph them emerging. A number of species are already on the wing around the country and weather permitting, I will be able to get out next weekend to enjoy the weather and hopefully, find a species or two to photograph.

 

 Hairy Dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) female emerging

 

Hairy Dragonfly (Brachytron pratense) female