Erythromma najas Large Red-Eye Damselfly Male (Part 1)

It was a chilly morning, and the grass was wet, when I noticed a damselfly among the stubs of grass stems cut a few days ago. Some macro photographers like to find dew-covered insects on cold mornings because they are immobile and easy to photograph. My personal taste is that I don’t want the insects in my images to be covered with droplets of water. This scenario had a chilled, immobile insect but without a drop of dew on it.

A close look showed it to have a combination of characters I had not seen before. The blue markings near the tip of the tail suggested it was a Bluetail but the lack of antehumeral stripes rules this out. The dorsum of the thorax also had a metallic sheen. The yellow intersegmental rings indicated a female.

Finally, the red eyes, together with the above, finally solved the mystery, and made it a male.. This is the first time I have found this species in my garden.

With the insect quite immersed in the grass, It was tricky to get a clear view. However, it seems to have been too chilled (no, not that way roll eyes) to move as I gradually thinned out the grass stems around it.

Having examined the images on my PC, I decide to try to get the damselfly into a slightly more open position. On my return to it I found that it had moved, most obligingly, higher up, on a leaf.

I tried some daylight shots but with limited success. This was to get the true colours. Most images were lit by twin flash.

These images are from the first session.

EM-1, Kiron 105mm, f11 or f16, twin RC TTL flash, hand-held but with quite a lot of support from resting my hands on the ground.

Harold