Southern Migrant Hawker in Flight

I made my third visit to Oare Marshes in as many days yesterday to see the Southern Migrant Hawkers and in particular, try to attempt some flight shots of these stunning electric blue dragonflies. Thankfully, it was not as hot as the past few days but was still quite pleasant but with an annoying breeze which would make the challenge even harder. I spent some time at first walking along both the East and West hide paths were I managed to find 10 Southern Migrant Hawkers, all males on patrol. Whilst some were quite near, they seemed to rarely pause to hover and continually spent their time flying up and down. After a good study of a number of individuals flying, I ended up on the West flood where I found a likely candidate patrolling a small area and spent a while making a few mental notes on the flight path, height, background colour etc. As mentioned earlier, there was a stiff breeze which really made it quite hard to lock onto the dragonfly, quickly manual focus and fire off some shots, but after many shots out of focus, parts of dragonfly in and out of the frame, I eventually managed a number of pleasing shots with some even in focus! For most of the shots, I used a Canon f4 300mm lens which is a great lens but at times can be quite tricky to get the subject in frame quickly before it moves off. With the Southern Migrant Hawker flying by at times quite close, I decided to sit on the edge of the dyke and switch to the Sigma 150mm macro lens. Although not as near as the 300mm lens, I found it easier to lock onto the Hawker and took a number of photos with this. If it wasn't for that pesky breeze and the subject getting blown around all over the place, I was pretty sure I could have achieved better results but I can't complain I suppose about what I did get, considering the circumstances. Hopefully, I can return again next week where fingers crossed, the weather is again sunny and I can spend a few hours watching and studying these superb dragonflies.

 

Southern Migrant Hawker (Aeshna affinis) - male