My First 'Kent' Aurantiaca

With a few Scarce Blue-tailed Damselflies being seen over the past few days at Sandwich Bay, including the stunning female form 'aurantiaca', I was keen for a visit to hopefully see them as I have only ever seen this female form once nearly ten years ago in the New Forest. As ever, the weather during the week has generally been good but as it's the weekend, it's never straight forward. Thunder and lightning and heavy rain throughout the early hours of Saturday morning was not a good start but looking at the forecast did suggest that it would brighten up for a while in the afternoon. I gambled around midday and drove down to Sandwich Bay where on arrival, it was a little cloudy with drizzly rain. I walked up to the site and started checking the long grasses around the pools. It wasn't long until I found a male Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly which flew up from the grasses and soon came to rest. I spent a while studying and photographing this individual before moving off to check whether any orange matchsticks could be found. I must have been checking another 30 minutes when I caught sight of some orange in the grasses. It was my first Kent female 'aurantiaca' form. What a stunner she was. With the clouds starting to break, it seemed good timing and I was able to take my time taking a number of photos and studying this little cracker. Over the next hour or so, I found at least 12 Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly which included 4 female form 'aurantiaca. What started out as a 'will I see anything session' certainly ended up being a superb session at this excellent site. I also saw at least 4 Dainty Damselfly, c4 Black tailed Skimmer, 1 Migrant Hawker, c5 Emperor Dragonfly, c50 Small Red eyed Damselfly and a few Blue tailed and Common Blue Damselfly and a coupe of Emerald Damselfly. I thoroughly recommend a visit to this site to enjoy its odonata. Superbly managed and the results speak for themselves. 

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly - female 'aurantiaca' form