Failed targets

Another weekend in Eibergen, and some new dragonfly targets. This time I wanted to find emerging Beautiful Demoiselles and the extremely rare Northern Emerald. But things didn't really go as planned. First of all the weather wasn't really as predicted with only 15ºC and quite some wind. When we arrived at the stream, it was still quite early and cold. Last year I found several demoiselle excuviae, but now we couldn't find any. After a while Geert found one male Beautiful Demoiselle resting on top of some plants. Normally demoiselles always rest with their wings together, but this one sat with the wings spread out. I think he had just emerged, even though I couldn't find any excuviae. There was only little light, so it was quite hard to get good shots without any movement of the animal.

Our next stop was one of the few places with a population of Northern Emeralds in the Netherlands. With the sun a little bit higher in the sky (though still behind the clouds most of the time) the temperature rose a little and more dragonflies came out. Several Four-spotted Chasers and a few Northern White-faced Darters were seen, but no Northern Emeralds.... There was one path going through the area and we walked it up and down several times. We probably saw 2 emeralds flying, but they took of and were never found again. So another target failed.

Now we continued to a small stream in Eibergen where I'd seen Clubtails and Skimmers. I had little hope to find a Keeled Skimmer, but this was also in vein.

Fortunately the Common Bluetails came to the rescue. Even though the wind had also picked up, I managed to get some nice shots of one resting in some grass. So not the nice rare ones made the day, but one of the most common damselflies gave the best pictures.