In my quest to see all of the regularly breeding dragonflies and damselflies in Hampshire this year I had tried a couple of sites for Emerald Damselfly but with no luck and so, with a tip off from Steve, I met Steve and Niall at Cadnam Common, a site that I had never visited before. From the roadside layby we headed out across the common to the rapidly shrinking pond where before very long Steve located Emerald Damselfly around a clump of Juncus. Over the next couple of hours we enjoyed the abundant insect life around this pond with a good range of Odonata, including my first Hampshire Common Darter of the year as well as a few notable flies - you gotta love flies to appreciate them!
Emerald Damselfly
Emerald Damselfly
Emerald Damselfly
Common Darter
Common Darter - A freshly emerged individual
Black-tailed Skimmer
Keeled Skimmer
Emperor Dragonfly
Small Red Damselfly
The localised Brown Heath Robberfly
The highly localised dung-fly Scatomyza scybalaria, a species requiring very wet, dung enriched mud in which to breed
Not an especially rare species but this large female Tabanus sudeticus was egg laying, a behaviour I had not observed before. The image below shows the completed egg mass.
Egg mass of Tabanus sudeticus
