Pyrrhosoma nymphula
Large Red Damselfly
With the Large Red Damselfly now emerging in small numbers in the UK, I have been lucky to have a few emerge from my garden pond in east Kent. I have spent quite a bit of time at the pond side watching for them to emerge and have had lovely views of the whole emergence from start to finish. I wanted to try to capture this sequence on the camera and so set about early one morning getting into a position with a stem in mind that I hoped they would come up. As the day warmed up, one indeed to start to climb the stem, the only problem was that I had to add a green bit of card to the background as it was a brown view of a fence but it contrasted well with the nymph. I spent the next hour watching and photographing the emergence from beginning to end and have captured a series of photos which are on my Blog: www.marcheath.blogspot.com. The past few days have seen a few more emerge and again I have been quite lucky with the camera and obtain a few pleasing shots. I wanted to see how well the Canon 7d mk 1 would perform at close range and I was not disappointed. With the sun shining and natural grass as a background, I really like the shot below and I think captures 'that' moment well when the nymph becomes an adult damselfly. Hopefully more will emerge soon and any day now, the Hairy Dragonfly may be emerging. Always a great sight to see and the real start of the dragonfly season for me.
Large Red Damselfly Emerging
Marc Heath
