Emergence

Out in the garden today, and with blue skies and wall to wall sunshine is was time take the first photos of May. I sat by my pond, and within a couple of minutes I noticed a small damselfly resting on my Yellow Iris growing in the pond. It was in an awkward position to photo, so I thought I might risk coaxing it with my finger into a new position. It actually gripped the end of my finger and allowed me to place it elsewhere. It was very small, and when it flew it flew weakly and didn’t fly very far.

Then as I took a few snaps of it, I noticed a few others on bushes and plants near the pond. They were all the same species, the Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula), and appeared to be tenerals, newly emerged. Most of them seemed quite happy to just hang around in the sun as can be seen from this series of images.

Knowing I had Large Red Damselfly nymphs in my garden pond I did wonder whether these had developed from here, but they had only been there for a year, which might just be long enough, I guess.

Please click on the images for larger, mored detailed views.

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Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula) tenerals, rear garden, Staffordshire, England. May 2017.