Final moult

When I caught sight of this Drake Mackerel Mayfly on a bank of bramble and nettles down at Cleeve Prior Mill this afternoon, I wondered what on earth she was doing sitting out in the open like this: they're usually far more circumspect when they're not actually dancing. It was only when I got a photo and enlarged it on the camera that I realised the Mayfly had just finished her final transformation, from dun to spinner, and had chosen this perch on the bramble buds to facilitate her safe eclosure.

If you're not already aware of the basics of a Mayfly's life, I covered them in a post about three weeks ago. To recap briefly, these insects have a unique lifestyle, emerging from the water in which they've spent their larval stage as winged sub-adults (duns), and then moulting again to achieve their final adult form (spinners). And I say unique because they're the only known flying insects that moult again once they're on the wing. 

Because I hang around on river banks in summer I get to see a lot of duns and spinners, but this is as close as I've ever come to witnessing that final transformation. If I'd arrived half an hour earlier I'd probably have caught it, which would have been very cool indeed, but this is the first Mayfly exuvia I've ever seen, and that in itself makes me happy. 

For the record, there was a spiffy new male Four-spotted Chaser at Cleeve Prior Community Orchard today, who was making the two older guys very twitchy indeed. At the Orchard Pond, the award for first ovipositing dragon of the season went to a female Emperor - very unexpectedly, because I hadn't known till now that there were any Emperors on site. The poor thing had a pretty torrid time of it, being harried continually by the older Four-spotted Chasers and a male Hairy Dragonfly. And I then had a lovely encounter with a Hairy Dragon, who was hawking up and down between the trees where I was searching the long grass and wild flowers for damselflies, and who flew around me at about knee height for several seconds, before disappearing up into the canopy.