The second week of May saw an explosion of damselflies in the garden. The nymphs had been active in the pond before this, but only now began to emerge. The first signs were scattering of their exuvia on the pond edge. Soon after that, the azure damsels appeared in the garden, and on the weekend of the 10th the large reds exploded into life. There were numerous pairs flitting over the pond, engaged in mating behaviour. Warm weather on the 18th of the month provided another excellent photographic opportunity.

Damselflies are among the smaller of the dragonflies, and belong to the order Odanata and sub-order zygoptera.

The final four shots in the album were taken in July 2009 and show a blue-tailed damselfly (I think the identification is correct) emerging from the nymph stage.

The photos were taken with a variety of lenses and set-ups. Lenses were either the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS or Sigma 105mm F2.8 EX DG macro. I used a variety of extension tubes with both lenses on some shots; others had an 1.4 teleconverter added; and some were jsut with the lens. Most of the shots were taken with natural light, but for some I used either the Canon 430EX flash unit or the Sigma EM-140 DG ring flash.