............another real highlight of the garden....it really will be hard to beat this year I reckon. Heres some pictures of one of the two Southern Hawker larvae reaching the climax of their lives...turning from this...
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....in to this....my wife and my little boy were fortunate enough to see this happening. I was out but happy to return home to find it sitting underneath the Cottoneaster.
...this one is a female. Im unsure about the ratio of male to females etc in any of the various species or if they are all the same sex from any one pond?? All of the Broad-bodied Chasers (4 of them) were females. Sadly I didnt see the departure of the other Southern Hawker though I did find its casing (exuviae)....so its sex is unknown.
I remember seeing a dragonfly in the garden last autumn when we moved here, so that would have been around September. I didnt manage to identify it at the time, though im thinking it was a Southern Hawker again. At least that means there should, hopefully, be a few little Hawkers buzzing around the pond somewhere so I will have to be super careful when I give the pond a bit of an overhaul this late autumn.
How cool is that Graham :-)
ReplyDeleteWonder what else will emerge from that pond this year !