Scarce blue tail Damselflys in snowdonia july 5th

A quick trip up to the mountain lakes above Betws-y -coed early one morning , before making an afternoon visit to one of my favourite shooting areas, South Stack on Anglesey.  the weather as usual for this summer is not looking very good,  cool , breezy and fairly dull!  not very good in other words  Arghhhh.

any how i arrived and went in search of the Scarce Blue Tail damsels , it is only the beautiful orange "aurantica" form i am interested in photographing.  last year i shot them almost a month earlier , see last years  Blog
this is my second visit, the previous time i didnt see any so hopefully they will have emerged.  after about 20 minutes i had yet to see one, not good!  there appear to be quite a few newly emerged Keeled skimmers and black darters which shows how late everything is this year!  since the area i am looking for them is only very small after a third search i finally find a "Aurantica"   stunning damselflies to look at.

                                  this is the area , shallow water with very boggy margins

a quick shot of a Keeled Skimmer

as you can see, its very dull.  after squelching around for another 10-15 mins i found 2 more "Auranticas"  one of which looked like it had just emerged this morning as there was hardly any colour.

these are the best images i could get , even with high iso could not get a fast enough shutter speed to get really sharp images.

They really are beautiful :)

i finished of with an Emerald damselfly

sorry it was a short blog, but today's story will continue :)

Welsh Mountain Dragonflies June 20th 2011

This was the second trip to cors bodynydd in the welsh mountains high above betws-y-coed to see the Keeled skimmers.  hopefully the males  will have fully coloured up :)
This species are one of my favourites, especially the blue males which look stunning!  unfortunately when i arrived the weather was not very good, thick cloud and drizzly rain but i was here now, so on with the waterproof coat and off for a walk in the rain! lol    after half an hour i had seen nothing, i searched the area i found them in last visit then proceeded to search a wider area around the boggy swamp and stream area.  then unexpectedly i nearly trod on a snake, a beautifully patterned  adder!!   basking on a grassy mound in the rain!!!   very strange......

They have wonderful eyes :)

Having taken a couple quick shots before it slithered off into the undergrowth i continued over to more dryer ground where heather grows all over the area and it was here i found my target species, male Keeled skimmers perching on the heather bushes.   with the overcast conditions the light was perfect for shooting these dragons!


            The first male was almost fully coloured, you can still see the gold colour showing through!

the next one fully coloured, wonderful!

and another with gold still showing through on the abdomen!

Finding one low down near the ground i put on the mpe-65 macro lens to take a close up shot , this one still had rain drops all over it!

To finish off a great morning , shots of both male and female on my hand to show size of the little dragons:)

all shots taken with canon 5d2, 100mm L & mpe-65 macro lenses

Welsh Mountain Damselflys & Dragonflies June 6th/20 th 2011

Back in the summer i went up into the welsh mountains to a lake above Betws-y-coed to see the rare Scarce blue tail damselfly -Ischnura pumilio .  the shallow boggy mountain lake has a good population of them along with common blue tails and Keeled skimmer dragonflies.  but shooting is quite difficult because it always seems to be windy up high! 
There are two lakes, the first one   Cors bodyndd   has a huge number of Keeled skimmers - Orthetrum coerulescens. 

i wanted to find the dragonflies before it warmed up too much and they start to fly!  after an hour of not finding anything i had decided to go over to the other lake , but suddenly i spotted one flying, so i crossed a boggy stream area and found dozens of them warming themselves in the sun in a sheltered clearing!

here is a newly emerged female, beautiful colouration!

Then a male , you can just see the colour changing , a mature adult will be all blue!

I then found a male that has really started turning colour!

Having shot enough of this species for this day i made my way over to the other lake 

Llyn Tyn-y-mynydd.

This is the lake that has a good population of the rare Scarce blue tail damsel.  The Most beautiful is the female form "aurantiaca"

Almost immediately i found a couple perching on grass stems ,  i shot these with 100mm L macro, at f5.6 to get a nice clean background to show off these beautiful damsels!

They really are stunning to see!

Here is a male as a comparison!

and another female aurantiaca

This boggy mountain lake also has a large number of the native round leaved sundew.

There were also plenty of the more common  Blue - tail damselflies - ischnura elegans.

The females have at least five  distinct colour forms , here is the "rufescens" form

and a  "violacea" form

and a male

i suddenly found a female Keeled skimmer,with  beautiful lighting!

Then more female scarce blue tails!  cant get enough of these!

Meal time!

The end of a fantastic day , i came back to shoot the Keeled skimmers when they had fully coloured up, another blog to write!   lol

all shots canon 5d2, 100mm L macro lens.