Necessary Break - _TNY_0582
I spend time every summer at my mother-in-law's house outside Härnösand, about 500 km (300 miles) north of Stockholm and her huge garden which attracts all sorts of cool bugs.
She also has a pond in this garden and it attracts dragonflies as they need water for the larval stage of their development. The larval stage can take several years - and then the adult form only lives for a couple of months - or even weeks.
This beauty depositing her eggs in that pond is a female blue hawker (Aeshna cyanea). It's one of those species that appear to everything on the wing so you see them flying and flying and flying and just when you think they are going to take a break and land - they keep flying.
This one had to land to lay eggs though so I got a couple of shots from a bit of a distance.
This is actually the first time I've shot one of these at this location, but if you want to see a shot of the male (whose colour is athe "blue" part of the name), have a look here at one which landed on my son's ear: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50203486953/
Necessary Break - _TNY_0582
I spend time every summer at my mother-in-law's house outside Härnösand, about 500 km (300 miles) north of Stockholm and her huge garden which attracts all sorts of cool bugs.
She also has a pond in this garden and it attracts dragonflies as they need water for the larval stage of their development. The larval stage can take several years - and then the adult form only lives for a couple of months - or even weeks.
This beauty depositing her eggs in that pond is a female blue hawker (Aeshna cyanea). It's one of those species that appear to everything on the wing so you see them flying and flying and flying and just when you think they are going to take a break and land - they keep flying.
This one had to land to lay eggs though so I got a couple of shots from a bit of a distance.
This is actually the first time I've shot one of these at this location, but if you want to see a shot of the male (whose colour is athe "blue" part of the name), have a look here at one which landed on my son's ear: www.flickr.com/photos/tinyturtle/50203486953/