Plenty on the Wing

With lighter winds and some sunny spells forecast for yesterday (Sunday), I took a casual drive over to Nethergong around 9am where the plan was to walk around the east and northern section of the site and make a general count of the Willow Emerald Damselflies, before trying to capture a few photos of the top side of them without much clutter in the photos. It wasn't long until I had seen my first and them moving to what is probably one of my favourite areas in a sheltered sunny ride, there must have been around 30 Willow Emerald Damselfly all perched up in a small area. Moving on down the eastern side of the site produced a few more every few metres and this was the same on the north side too with good numbers all perched up in the exposed branches of the trees. A walk down the side of the stream produced a few newly emerged Willow Emerald Damselflies making their maiden flights. I ended up counting a respectable 112 Willow Emerald Damselfly which is up on last years total for the same period. I have yet to visit around lunchtime / early afternoon where normally they can be seen in tandem and ovipositing into the various nettles, bushes and trees so this will be interesting to see what kind of numbers I can see. They tend to disperse well around the campsite around this time so there are areas I have yet to look at which will hopefully increase the numbers. Weather permitting, I can get down in the next week or so to see what is happening with this species and continue to monitor them. After counting, I went back to a few areas and let the camera out of the bag where I wanted to capture a few shots of them from the top. Not always an easy task as they have such a long abdomen and getting everything in focus can be challenging. I found a few likely candidates low down and rattled off a number of shots, trying to eliminate the amount of clutter in the background with some working out quite nicely. Also seen included 1 Southern Hawker, 1 Brown Hawker, 4 Migrant Hawker, a few Blue tailed and Azure Damselflies and plenty of Common and Ruddy Darter. A relaxing session with plenty to see, study and photograph. Just how I like it!

 

 Willow Emerald Damselfly (chalcolestes viridis) - female

 Willow Emerald Damselfly (chalcolestes viridis) - male

 

  Willow Emerald Damselfly (chalcolestes viridis) - female

 

 Willow Emerald Damselfly (chalcolestes viridis) - male