Mum and Dad

I walked round to the old village pond this morning, to see if anyone was about - meaning dragons, of course - and immediately spotted this male Emperor on patrol. He was behaving a little strangely though - pausing and hovering in mid-air more than Emperors usually do - and for quite a while I couldn't work out why. Eventually I noticed a slight movement among the floating pond weed below him, and started trying to home in on it with the camera, but even then it took a while for me to track down the ovipositing female he was guarding. If you check out my second image you'll see why it was a little tricky to find a green, yellow and blue insect among the green and yellow vegetation and sky blue water.

It took me longer still to realise that in fact there were two females ovipositing, and while the male appeared to be guarding one of them, when the second one lifted off the pond weed he would chase her and they would clash, until after a few seconds he would allow her to drop back down onto the pond surface and resume laying her eggs. I found this behaviour interesting, though I can't explain it - the male didn't make any attempt to mate with the second female, and nor did he really attack her, but he did seem to be fairly annoyed by her presence, unless she stayed low to the vegetation in which case he ignored her. When the first female finished laying her eggs and flew away he followed her, leaving the second one to carry on ovipositing unmolested.

Before I go, can I remind those of you who play that Tiny Tuesday has rolled around again. There's no theme so the choice of subject is yours, but please use the tag TT530 if you'd like your photo to be included in the challenge. I'll look through all the tagged photos and choose my favourites on Thursday.