Mark Underwood planned to photograph this Black Darter up at Pole Cottage Pools only to find someone else in the photo! The result is a beautiful display of black and yellow insects and a reminder how large our dragonflies are in insect terms…and the Black Darter is the smallest dragonfly in the UK!
Elsewhere Geoff Hall has taken a couple of lovely photos of damselflies on leaf-rafts. At a glance these 2 small damselflies with blue tails could appear quite similar, but if you look carefully the blue pigment is positioned further down the abdomen in the Small Red-eyed Damselfly (below left) and unsurprisingly this delicate damsel has red eyes. The Blue-tailed Damselfly (below right) also has diagnostic bicoloured pterostigma – black and white wing spots.
