Hawking

After a very useful and constructive meeting with my rheumatology consultant this morning, I met up with R for a celebratory coffee and cake at Boston Tea Party, before yomping along the river in search of autumn dragons. I pretended to think that lugging heavy gear at a fast trot would reduce the harmful effects of the cake, but in truth I didn't really care: a weekend of running around after the Boy Wonder, during which he ate rather more than I did, had given me what I'm going to call "cake headroom", and I was more than happy to take advantage of it.

There were some nice dragons down at Lucy's Mill - several Common Darters and Migrant Hawkers, and one Brown Hawker - as well as a single male Banded Demoiselle, who might well be the last of his kind for this site this season. The Demoiselle made me sad of course, because I can't help anthropomorphising, but I was on a schedule to get a postable photo before R's parking time expired, so I simply recorded him and moved on to the dragons.

I've had a little battle with the Migrant Hawkers at this spot over the past few weeks, because they can see me standing on the bank as they're patrolling the reeds, and their brains are extremely capable of dealing simultaneously with all the levels of their hierarchy of needs:

1. Food

2. Sex

3. Avoidance of predators.

I don't personally feel that I look especially predatory, but they seem to disagree - I think there's something about the big black eye of the camera lens that disturbs them, because they don't react as strongly if I simply stand and watch them, with the camera lowered - and when hovering (as Migrant Hawkers like to do) they tend to place themselves so that there's a branch, a nettle, or some other obstruction between themselves and me. This can be frustrating obviously, but I like to think (anthropomorphising again) that they find it amusing, which lets me turn the pursuit into a game rather than taking it too seriously, and meant that my response to nailing this shot was "Ha! Gotcha!"

The dragon was more gracious in defeat than I was in victory, but I'm excusing myself on the grounds that the dragonfly window for this year is narrowing, and every win now is worth celebrating.