Hawking

I was tired today, after yesterday's party. Because of the way I live my life these days, I'm more used to chatting to six-legged creatures than to two-legged people, and though I had a good time at the party, by last night I felt as though I'd done my entire quota of talking for the year.

Back in my comfort zone this morning, I was pottering around the garden, wittering gently at the various insects I was finding, when this Southern Hawker streaked past me on a hunting mission. I stood back and watched in admiration for several minutes, as he worked the circuit that numerous of his forebears have also favoured, in and out of the patches of light and shade at the far end of the top garden, where I presume that his superb eyesight gives him an inbuilt advantage over the lesser beings he thinks of as food.

After a while he came down on the lonicera, and after I'd taken a few distant record shots I began to play Grandmother's Footsteps with him, seeing how closely I could approach. Not that you can hide from a dragonfly, of course - those wraparound eyes provide close to 360° vision - but its brain is primed to react to movement, so if you go slowly and don't wave your arms around, you can sometimes get to within close-up distance. Which, as you can see, I achieved today. This was my last shot though: a split second after I'd pressed the shutter he let go of the shrub, dropped a few inches, and then zoomed upwards, right in front of the camera. As I was looking through the viewfinder of a macro lens at the time, and therefore seeing him magnified, this gave me quite a shock, and I instinctively stepped back to avoid him bumping into me. By the time I pulled myself together, laughing at my own foolishness, he was back on his hunting circuit, and the next time he landed he made sure to do it well above my head, in one of the birch trees.

I spent most of the rest of the day at my desk, catching up with some processing work. I've now posted a selection of images from my trip to Trench Wood on Wednesday on my Facebook page, if you'd care to take a look.