Of damselflies and demoiselles

During my bioblitz I noticed a couple of types of damselfly in my garden – strangely none emerging from the pond.  I’d also noticed some at the Country Park during Tern watch.  I shouldn’t really have been surprised when I found some during my lunchtime sojourn to the River Nene.  I did notice quite a few darting about, thin electric blue insects, nervously settling, but moving as soon as I made even the slightest move in their direction. I gave up trying to photograph them, they weren’t playing.  So I wandered off to look for hoverflies and warblers.

It was then that I spotted the demoiselle – the most beautiful insect created.  If you have no idea what I’m talking about then Google it.  I couldn’t take a photograph because it was off in the reed beds, but I did look at it through my binoculars.  They are breathtakingly lovely.

Whilst I was making my way back looking for bees and bugs I stumbled across some mating damselflies – I almost missed them.  They were sufficiently distracted to stay still long enough for a photo.

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I then found a female ovipositing on a leaf further along the path.  She was also obliging to a would-be insect identifier.

IMG_1743I thought that these were probably the same as the other blue damsels I had seen, but when I got out my excellent field guide I discovered these were blue-tailed damselflies.  Just as common as the azure and blue-tailed varieties, not as beautiful as the demoiselle, but they are the only ones I caught on camera and properly ID’d today!