A War Torn male Emperor Dragonfly.

I had just watched this male Emperor Dragonfly pictured above win yet another aerial territorial dispute at windmill farm wildlife trust.  He may have won this battle but not without its wings incurring damage as a result of this and several other aerial collisions.

Its rival however had far more damage and unable to maintain a controlled flight it landed in the water where it looked in danger of drowning.

A light wind came to its rescue flushing it towards the water margins where it climbed onto various grasses to gain some height to dry out but its wings were looking really tatty with fifty percent of one missing completely

When it did eventually try to fly it had no control and just flipped over so as with any species that relies on wings to survive it looked like his rival had taken him out.

There was little to nothing that I could do to help this otherwise fine and healthy looking dragonfly so I decided to take advantage and take some interesting close focus images for my records

When I had finished there was still no sign of it being able to control its flight so I moved it to some higher sunlit reeds and left it to take its chances but it looked like :                                                                                            
                                 This particular Emperor had just lost his Kingdom to another !

Early AM and late PM

Early Am today came with a lovely sunrise that proved to be short lived as it was devoured by cloud cover with in twenty minutes but while it lasted over our Longrock  Roe deer fields I was able to capture three Doe Roe deer in the company of the same buck that was showing two days ago.

The cloud cover lasted well into the afternoon but I did finally pop off down on to the Lizard peninsula at Windmill farm looking for Dragonflies and common Lizards,  The boardwalk lizards gave me a hard time for best part of an hour and at no time did I achieve a clean shot of the two I worked on,  Female Emperor Dragonflies were far more productive and as they laid their eggs on sparse surface pond weeds I was able to catch a few nice reflections some of which are posted below,

I also took a complete sequence of a pair of Emperor Dragonflies aerial mating, crash landing in the water in a wheel formation and eventually hauling themselves out of the water onto a reed that a light breeze blew them against,  I need a little more time but hope to publish them AM tomorrow,

As I was packing up to leave Windmill farm I noticed a pair of meadow pipit that were predating on the abundant local grasshoppers, They seemed to habitually land on the same fence post prior to delivering their prey to their nest creating an opportunity that could not be ignored,  I took several shots from my current position at around twenty metres with the birds back lit, Some were quite pleasing soI decided it was worth setting my camera up on remote shutter release with the sun behind and the relevant fence post at a minimum of 3.5m to achieve a full frame image of the bird front lit,  One original image is followed by one remote image posted below,