Working from home means I'm 10 minutes walk away from the Common, and with the weather being absolutely gorgeous today, I thought I'd pop out for a bit around lunch time, and see what Ornamental Lake has to offer in terms of damsels and dragons.
But the vast majority of damsels flying around were of the blue variety .... question was: azure or common blue? As I'm still very new to id-ing damselflies, especially blue damselflies, my only option was to try and take pictures of them when they settled, and then zoom in on the pictures in the hope of being able to see the key traits separating the two species. It turned out that most of the blue damsels I managed to take a picture of were azure damselflies, a new species for me!
Dragonflies didn't disappoint either. First a few broad-bodied chasers, and then the highlight of the day: a few downy emeralds, also new for me! Absolutely gorgeous animals in the bright sunshine, with their metallic-green eyes, bronze-green thorax, and sparkling gold abdomen. And just as I was about to leave, I spotted a hawker flying over the lake, which turned out to be a hairy dragonfly (new species #3!).
The two tables of today's lunch time (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):
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