With Lesser Emperors being seen in the low twenties at New Hythe and this species being quite hard it seems for me to photograph over the years, I decided on my fourth visit this year to see whether I could actually get a camera on to some of them. Arriving in the sunshine at 09:45am yesterday (Friday) I made my way to one of the lakes to see whether I could see any and it wasn't long until I looked in a fisherman's swim and saw a few already on the wing. I reckon I had only been there c30 minutes or so and must have seen at lest 10 flying up and down but as usual, they weren't stopping for any photos. This species only very briefly pauses to hover giving the photographer a fraction of a second to lock on, focus and fire off a few shots and like my previous visits, they were not being easy at all and so much so, I decided to move on to look in the other swims which again produced a few more flying up and down the area. I then received a message from Glenn informing me that he had a pair in tandem egg laying and thankfully I wasn't too far away. I soon met up with Glenn who proceeded to take me to where he had seen them and a few seconds later as if by magic, a pair flew in and started egg laying. The camera was soon into some action and as ever, there were reeds in the way of the perfect shot but in all honesty, I was just pleased to be able to get some shots of them. We spent some time photographing them here with others flying by every now and then. We moved on again where we met Terry briefly who had seen some more and I strongly suspect, that between us, we must have seen at least 30 Lesser Emperor Dragonfly during the session. I would imagine there were more as well as we saw quite a few pairs flying in by in tandem, in fact they were the most common large dragonfly we saw whilst there. Glenn and Terry made there way off and I stayed for a bit longer and just enjoyed the spectacle. What a success story this species is having here and this site must be one of the best in the country. Other species seen during the day included Emperor Dragonfly, Brown Hawker, Black tailed Skimmer, Common Blue Damselfly, Blue tailed Damselfly, Red eyed Damselfly and Small Red eyed Damselfly. A great few hours watching a lovely dragonfly and many thanks to Glenn for his time in meeting me and showing me some of the hot spots.
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