The Bog - Emerald Damselflies

Emerald Damselflies must be one of the most beautiful of our Damselflies. The iridescent metallic sheen gives them an edge on just about all the others!

Here's the male, noticeably thin abdomen with powdery blue coloration on the side of the thorax, pronotum and some of the segments. 

The female has a distinctly thicker abdomen, greenish above with beige underparts.

And you can clearly tell for these two, it was love at firstsight!

Whixall Moss - Damsels, Dragons and Large Heath!

One of my last remaining targets amongst the Shropshire butterflies was Large Heath and Whixall Moss was the only realistic place to nail this! It was to turn into a marathon however...

Never mind, a chance to get a nice collection of Emerald Damselfly images and upgrade the current website Odonata section! This female has a colour pattern I've not come across but presumably an immature.....








Males despite their small size really are attractive insects, unlike other Damselflies, the wings are often held open at rest.













The lovely colour combination of the thorax seen in close up....






There were black Darters galore as well! Ladies first.......








Immature males.....








A very skittish adult male!






At the other extreme, freshly emerged teneral males.....








Quite a few Peacocks on the wing.....






And finally, after fours hours of persistence and a fair bit of walking, the object of the day flew from the Moss, right in front of me landing on the track!






Ten minutes later, another one!! Obligingly landing on the bracken.








The insects aren't over yet, I'm about to go on the hunt for 'new' butterflies and and a 200 mile round trip with Rob beckons tomorrow......