Having seen the dragonfly larvae beginning to crawl out of
the pond I read about the emergence of dragonflies and read that after
selecting a stem to use they will, on warm summer evenings crawl out
after sunset and have flown before sunrise. A good plan to avoid getting
eaten by, in a more natural setting, passing coots and moorhens, when
it would be at it's most vulnerable.
So, up at 1am and shone a torch out
of the window, (my small pond is only 3ft from the house), I saw the
larvae had crawled a foot out of the water and was hanging on in the
windy conditions. Decided to set the alarm for 4 and hope I wouldn't
have missed the emergence. At 4 o'clock and the larvae was in exactly
the same location and condition. The weather was far from warm, being
cold, cloudy and windy but surprised to hear and see bumble bees busy on
the honeysuckle. Made a cup of tea and sat and waited. 09.15 the larvae
split and the emergence started, noticed it was a Southern Hawker
Dragonfly.
09.40 it pushed itself further out and hung up-side-down.
10.00 it flipped itself and at 10.05 it was out.
10.30 the
wriggling and twitching of before it emerged, continued plus now
pumping, as it's body and wings began to expand.
This continued all
afternoon, noticed at 14.12 that it's body and wings were changing
colour, getting darker and at 17.40 it first opened it's wings.
The
weather was still chilly, cloudy and windy which I guess why it was
taking so long. Later it closed it's wings again and that's how it
spent Monday night. Tuesday morning it was still here, wings now fully
open and fully developed.
Here it stayed all day, wanting to see it
fly off we checked continually. 9 o'clock it was still here but at 10 it
had left. It would have been a bonus to see it rev up and take to the
air but I can't complain. Stewart.
Images Copyright : Stewart Dennis.
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