Hawker

After a couple of days without a good walk (although we did have a short stroll around the top of Shipley Hill yesterday), it was good to get out again today for a longer walk around the old theme-park site. We were looking for Blackberries again - and we managed to pick a good number - but by far the best thing we saw this morning was a Brown Hawker (Aeshna grandis).

The Brown Hawker is one of our largest Dragonfly species and is fairly common. Like small helicopters, they fly past you, making quite a loud noise from it's beating wings. This individual was a male as can be discerned from it's 'waist', just below the two blueish spots on the abdomen. Females lack this 'waist' and the two blue spots.
The bronze colour of the wings and body of this species, make it fairly easy to identify on the wing as it flits past, usually at high speed.