Mystery of blue dragonfly
IT’S very exciting when you see something you have never seen before, so I was over the moon when I saw a blue dragonfly with a distinctive black rear end.
It was sitting on a gravel path in front of me and it was so sunny and bright that I could not Google it to find out what it was.
As I walked along the path the dragonfly would rise up and then land again, sometimes within ‘nice photo distance.’
But it was intriguing me to actually know what I was photographing.
Fortunately, an ‘expert’ wandered past and informed me that “it’s a black-tailed skimmer”. Yes, it certainly had a black tail and its body was this wonderful powder blue. It was pretty big for an insect - they are normally 4.5cm to 5cm long. I certainly couldn’t miss it on a path in front of me.
Then I saw another and another. And then another expert told me that more of these beasties were sunbathing on a wooden wall outside a hide.
The black-tailed skimmer is a narrowbodied dragonfly that can often be seen flying low over the gravel and mud around flooded gravel pits and reservoirs. It is on the wing from May to August. Its larvae can take two to three years to mature and once they emerge from the water, they may travel some distance over land to find a suitable site to undergo metamorphosis.
After mating, mature females lay their eggs by hovering over the water, dipping the tip of their abdomen in, and dropping their eggs on to vegetation below the surface. The male black-tailed skimmer has a grey thorax and a powder-blue abdomen with yellow spots along the sides and a black tip.
The female is yellowybrown with two black stripes running the length of the body. I didn’t see any of them. It is one of a number of species that may be taken by hobbies; beautiful, small birds of prey. I have spent hours watching the hobbies catching dragonflies, and then watching as the insect’s wings float down to the ground, at Brockholes, our reserve off the M6 in Lancashire.
It’s all part of the circle of life and people who flee screaming when they see a dragonfly heading towards them should just salute and wish them well. They are adding splashes of colour to our landscape, eating smaller insects and providing food for other wildlife.
I also love spending hours searching the undergrowth for bright red, blue and green dragonflies and damselflies to photograph, but with the black-tailed skimmer I did not need to search too far.
The Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside is dedicated to the protection and promotion of the wildlife in Lancashire, seven boroughs of Greater Manchester and four of Merseyside, all lying north of the River Mersey. It manages around 40 nature reserves and 20 Local Nature Reserves covering acres of woodland, wetland, upland and meadow. The Trust has 29,000 members, and over 1,200 volunteers. »●To become a member of the Trust go to the website at www.lancswt. org.uk or call 01772 324129. For more information about Cheshire Wildlife Trust call 01948 820728 or go to cheshirewildlifetrust. org.uk.