A Southern Hawker Emerges.

A stroll around Ashdown Forest with Nigel produced 4 different Southern Hawkers seen emerging from their excuvia. The first one was the only one in the open enough to get some shots of, albeit in the middle of a small pool so I could only get shots by using the telephoto, unless I was going in up to my waist!! There was just 11 minutes between the first and last shots in this sequence, so it all happened pretty quickly and we were lucky to be in the right place at the right time. All the others were more advanced in their emergence than this.

Southern Hawker emerging as we first found it.

Wings starting to expand.

Just 11 minutes later and the wings have expanded.

With Ashdown being quite high up the Black Darters are not yet showing, the Small Red Damselfly however are now flying around the acid pools.

Small Red Damselfly.