I Present To You...The Dainty Damselfly

With news of a female aurantiaca phase Scarce Blue tailed Damselfly being found at Sandwich Bay which constitutes the first proven record of breeding for Kent, I was keen to try and find this individual as it had been a good ten years since I last saw an aurantiaca. the weather Saturday mid morning was pretty cloudy, but with an improving forecast, I decided to give it a go and so arrived at Sandwich about 11am. I made my way to the area which looks excellent at the moment for odonata and had a few walks around in the dull conditions. It was as predicted, quite hard to find anything but with the clouds starting to break around lunchtime, activity started to pick up. Given the date, I thought I might have an outside chance of finding a Dainty Damselfly and thankfully, over the next couple of hours, I found at least 20 Dainty Damselfly. Most were tenerals with some seen making their maiden flights out to the grasses. I managed to find a few fresh individuals and after checking out the identification features, set about taking a few photos. I moved on again and also managed to find a number of mature males which means they must have emerged a good few days ago. They really are quite Dainty as the name suggests and have to be one of my favourite damselflies to see and photograph. I spent a while watching and photographing them and hopefully I can get back in the next few weeks as the numbers build up. I never did in 4 hours of looking find the orange 'aurantiaca' but found 3 Scarce Blue tailed Damselfly which included a mature male and two teneral males. I shall post some photos of these in the next few days. Also seen were 2 Broad bodied Chaser, 3 Black tailed Skimmer and a few Common Blue, Blue tailed and Azure Damselfly. An excellent session at a superb site which has been well managed for the odonata and other wildlife. 

Dainty Damselfly (coenagrion scitulum) male

Dainty Damselfly (coenagrion scitulum) - teneral females