Counter-stroking

I was busy doing domestic stuff all morning, and it was early afternoon before I was able to get outside with the camera. It wasn't an especially bright day, but it was fairly warm, and it seemed like a good time to look for some Migrant Hawkers and try to photograph them in flight. 

The nearest accessible stretch of the Avon to here is at Cleeve Prior Mill, but at weekends all the fishing pegs tend to be occupied, so I went into Stratford and walked up and down  both banks of the river west of Lucy's Mill Bridge. It took me over forty minutes to find this one cooperative male patrolling reeds near the new marina, but ten minutes after that I had all the shots I needed and was heading back home, job done.

There's a fascinating film about dragonflies on YouTube, which describes them as the most effective hunters on the planet, and explains some of the unique anatomical and physiological adaptations that make them such deadly predators. One of these is the fact that each wing is under direct independent muscle control, allowing a dragonfly to move with precision in any direction, including backwards, or to hover on the spot, which is the Migrant Hawker's particular party piece. Hovering is achieved by flapping the fore and hind wings 180° out of phase with each other, a technique called counter-stroking, which is illustrated in the film by an animation, but is even pretty clear, I think, in this still photo.

Whenever I meet someone who asks why I find dragonflies so interesting, I point out that they're the absolute masters of two elements - the aquatic environment where they spend most of their lives as growing nymphs, and then the air when they emerge from the water in order to breed and complete their life cycles. They're apex invertebrate predators both underwater and in the air, and at no point are they taught any of their formidable skills: everything they do is driven by instinct that's hard-wired into their brains. How anyone could not be interested in them is a complete mystery to me.