Golden girl
Every now and then someone posts a photo of a drab and battered, often uniformly brown damselfly or dragonfly to one of the Facebook groups and asks what it is, and receives in reply the name of the species, along with the offhand comment, "Over-mature female". I know it comes down to being an over-mature female myself, and indulging in an unhealthy level of anthropomorphism, but I always feel a tiny spike of intense irritation at this entirely factual summary, and have to give myself a bit of a talking to.
Now we've reached the end of days for this year's Banded Demoiselles, the few females that are still around are looking rather the worse for wear - as are the males, of course, though I think we're legally obliged to describe them as "distinguished". However, this was one of the less battered females I saw at Lucy's Mill in Stratford this afternoon. She's decorated with enough dried mud and river scum to show that she's done her fair share of ovipositing, but I thought it was interesting that while some of her consoeurs are de-pigmenting from deep green towards grey, she's turning a rather fabulous colour that I'm struggling to name, but which puts me in mind of greenish amber or peridot. Rather than over-mature, I'm going to describe her as a golden girl.
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