Common Darter, immature female........

.........another one of my hobbies, photographing Dragons, the trout pout look here are not really lips, the mouth is actually a little lower.

Here's the whole thing. Common Darter is about 50mm long, wingspan 60-70mm



Got loads more if anyone is interested enough.

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One day it will all be firewood.

Cool

You can post a few more for me if you like

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DIY | Donnas dream house

..must take alot of patience to get a shot like that...and a good macro...

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Verwood Handyman
I Know it says I'm On-line, but I might have just left myself logged in, whilst I'm out....

Not the sort of thing that you can say,"Hold that position whilst I get my camera out."

You must spend a lot of time waiting for a shot like that.

Very good.

This was our Clemitis wearing a 'diamond' necklace, thanks to a handy spider and some very fine drizzle.

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You can always tell a Yorkshireman,
But you cannot tell him much.

ayjay what camera did you use for that picture? what lense?

I currently use a Canon 40D with my birding lens, a Canon 100-400 zoom, the shortest focus distance on the lens is 2m so I also use a 30 mm extension tube which brings the shortest focus down to about 900mm. It's a bit clunky but I've not got around to buying a dedicated macro lens yet.

Patience is certainly useful, particularly for flight shots, but not getting frustrated is probably far more important, getting a nice clean shot can be very difficult, there's so often just one blade of grass in the way which will screw up the autofocus (and screw up the shot anyway if you switch to manual focus).

I'll stick with the Common Darter for tonight, here's a mature male (the red one), and a freshly emerged male, the wings here are still filling out and only just about capable of flight.





here's a spider for your web Dave.

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One day it will all be firewood.

nice shoots!

Just been reading the little biggers can fly at up to 30mph!

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Professional Kitchen & Bathroom Fitters | Master Painters and Decorators | Brighton & Hove

Nice pictures

I have not seen any of those since I was a child as I used to see them when I went fishing but I never knew what they were. I have vague memories of them around the pond where I used to go fishing, some of them must of been 6 inches long!

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DIY | Donnas dream house

............and not only forwards; backwards or sideways makes no difference to them.

They are fascinating little critters, and each species has it's own slightly different survival strategy - they also pre-date dinosaurs - but were much bigger then - up to a 750mm wingspan in those days.

Here's one of our local specialities - Southern Damselfly - only found in any numbers (in the UK) in the New Forest and one area of Wales with a few much smaller populations scattered elsewhere - not much bigger than a flying matchstick.

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One day it will all be firewood.

Can they bite or sting?

I'm sure I was told they could bite so I used to give them a wide birth

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DIY | Donnas dream house

They have no sting; they catch their prey in what is effectively a flying basket created by their legs, the legs are progressively longer to the rear and equipped with little projections which help latch on to whatever they catch.

This pic of an Emerald Damselfly shows the basket fairly well.



They could possibly bite you if you were handling one but it's not one of their defence mechanisms and is very unlikely, they are not known to attack humans.

The largest we have in the UK is an Emperor Dragonfly, which could well be what you saw when fishing, 150mm is about right for total length.

Emperor flight shot.

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One day it will all be firewood.

Brilliant pictures, thanks for sharing

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DIY | Donnas dream house

You should see how they mate. Then male grabs his misses by the neck and doesn't let go until she submits!

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Professional Kitchen & Bathroom Fitters | Master Painters and Decorators | Brighton & Hove

Just like Humans then

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DIY | Donnas dream house

Yes, I always begin by transferring a packet of sperm to my secondary genitalia and then take somewhere between 6 seconds and six hours before I finish, a considerable part of this time of course is spent using my penis to scrape out any sperm left by a previous male - maybe you've met my wife.

This is a Common Darter pair - *in wheel* as it's called, it's insect porn really.

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One day it will all be firewood.