Azure Enters The World.

With the sun once again not showing itself today I thought I was totally wasting my time looking for insect life. Certainly the butterflies have been keeping their heads down with only 2 Speckled Wood seen in the woods. Anyway, I was out at Laughton and strolling past the lake when I noticed a damselfly exuvia that looked a bit paler than others I've seen. Checking it out through the binoculars I was surprised to see it was a damselfly just starting to emerge, better still it was in a position where I could get to it without damaging any reeds or getting the feet wet!! Having seen Marc Heaths' fabulous sequence I was keen to photograph the action as it happened. The light was very poor but hopefully the images are not too bad. This is a small selection of the images taken which shows the story.

Squeezing out of the exuvia.

Once out pumping up the body.

Then the wings start to grow.

Wings nearly the length now of the body 30 minutes after emerging.

A couple of hours later the damselfly was resting and hiding near the bottom of the reeds where the markings showed it to be an Azure Damselfly.

It certainly was a fantastic experience watching this damselfly entering the World and one that I will not forget for sometime!!

There were also several White-legged Damselflies showing today and it was good to get a few pictures of these, especially as there was not a lot else flying today.

White-legged Damselfly.