Found Susan!

We've been trying to find scarce blue-tailed damselflies three times this past month, at three different sites in the New Forest, but without success. The title of my blog post was a play on the title of the 1985 movie 'Desperately Seeking Susan'.

We decided to go back to Roundeye Hill for one more attempt, especially given it was far less windy than last time we went there. Although it was mostly cloudy, the sun did show its face every once in a while.

When the sun came out, we saw several common darters and several keeled skimmers.

In terms of damselflies, we first saw a few small red damsels, and then, a little bit later, a blue-tailed damsel. Blue-tailed, not scarce blue-tailed ...

And then, I spotted a bright orange damselfly! Could this be an immature 'aurantiaca' scarce blue-tailed damsel female?

A little later, in the same general area, another damsel, with no striping or other pattern on the thorax .... mature scarce blue-tailed damsel female??

In both cases, the damsels fit the picture in our field guide almost perfectly, but, never having seen the species, I didn't want to jump to conclusions .... 

We did see a third damsel, which almost got caught by a keeled skimmer seconds after we spotted her. The skimmer swooped down as the damsel took off from the heather, hit it, but couldn't grab it, and the damsel ended up in the water. While I was sacrificing my dry feet in the bog, she managed to free herself from the water and settled nearby. 

Coming home, I posted the pictures in the British Dragonflies and Damselflies Facebook group, and, yes, my hopes were confirmed: all scarce blue-tailed damsels!

Susan has been found!!

Here are today's tables, including the first new damseldragonfly species of the year (one = 1; few = 2-4; several = 5-9; many = 10+):