Recently, out of the blue, I received a request from a friend, RB, to help with some photography for a book. Mercifully, no camera skills were required on my part as I was simply to be the Odonata consultant: pond dipping for damselfly and dragonfly larvae, identifying the species and monitoring their health during the shoot. A trip to a local hardware store to buy supplies for pond-dipping saw me as the proud owner of a new colander and washing-up bowl, whilst rifling through the bathroom cabinet turned up some plastic spoons and small measuring cups for moving around individual larvae.
I suggested a water body near home, the pond at Brinkies Guest House, which contains three species of damsel and one species of dragon. Thankfully, there were still larvae in the pond which had not yet decided to leave their aquatic lifestyle and emerge as adult insects. The guest house owner, YH, kindly allowed my friend to set up his equipment on a picnic bench in the lee of the property (can you believe it was windy on the day?!) and then off we went to see what we could find in the pond. We soon had about a dozen larvae in our bowls and I was able to identify Black Darter dragonfly, Large Red Damselfly and Blue-tailed Damselfly.
RB "decorated" his small glass tank with aquatic plants from the pond, then one by one, an individual of each species was introduced to it. He then fitted a flash diffuser to his camera gear which was able to nestle over the tank and soften the glare from the flash. Fortunately, back in the bowls, none of the larvae were particularly bothered by each other, so my fears of ending up with one extremely satiated dragonfly larva were unfounded.
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| Large Red Damselfly larva |
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| The 'X' marks on the external gills of a Large Red Damselfly |
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| Blue-tailed Damselfly larva |
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| The sharply-pointed external gills of a Blue-tailed Damselfly larva |
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| A Black Darter larva |
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| The maestro at work |
Once RB was happy, or as happy as a photographer ever is, we returned the larvae to the pond and spent a bit of time looking at the adult insects which were resting, feeding, mating or egg-laying all around us.
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| A recently-emerged male Black Darter |
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| A mature male Emerald Damselfly |
I will finish with some footage of Black Darters egg-laying in tandem into the damp moss growing on a tarmac track. The eggs will remain in diapause, only hatching next Spring, when the larvae will make their way to, hopefully, deeper water.
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