Emerald

Mature Downy Emeralds are bronzy-green, with vivid green eyes, but it's a long time since I last saw one - I usually go looking for them as they emerge, when they're pinkish with buff-coloured eyes, and by this time in the season I've generally moved on to other quarry. Today I made another trip to Lower Moor in Wiltshire in search of some mature individuals, and found several in the birch woodland on the north side of the reserve. They're tricky though, favouring thick, well-vegetated scrub, where they can sink down into the foliage and effectively disappear among the greenery, and even when you find one it's usually impossible to get a clean shot.

Having lined up my excuses in advance, I'll now say that I'm not actually unhappy with the main image. I'd watched this male hunting around a little clearing in the wood, and had seen him come down on the bramble, but I didn't have a clear sightline on him, or a direct route to reach him, so quite a lot of careful tiptoeing around had to happen to get me into position for this shot. 

The second photo records the second biggest surprise of my afternoon. I was walking slowly and carefully through the scrub, diligently searching as I went, but - almost unbelievably - what alerted me to this second male was not those astonishing eyes (which I haven't enhanced), but the sound of his wings vibrating as he tried to quickly warm the muscles so that he could fly away. I was so close to him that I had to minimise the zoom to get this image, and in the circumstances I think I was lucky to capture anything at all. I was starting to zoom back in again, to try for a close-up of his head, when he lifted off and flew away. 

I've decided not to add the only photo I've kept of the day's biggest surprise, because it's pretty grotesque, but if you're a member of either of the main UK Odonata groups on Facebook you'll probably have seen it anyway. It was the front half of a Four-spotted Chaser, its abdomen completely ripped away, but still alive and flying around, which tried briefly to land on me before gliding down and settling on the path. I don't think of myself as squeamish, but the sight of the poor creature made me feel faintly ill.