We have a small garden pond that is about 3 metres long and 75 cm deep at one end. Over the last 3 years many little frogs have grown up there and there are plenty of water snails. We have also seen the odd newt and have seen dragonfly larvae in the water. Doubtless the dragonfly larvae feed well on the tadpoles! Although I have often seen damselflies by the pond I had never seen adult dragonflies until last night.
My eldest son is back from university and on Saturday he noticed that there were a number of dragonfly casings at the edge of the pond. Last night he took out the torch and saw a newly emerged dragonfly.
The newly-emerged dragonfly is on the right of its old larval casing which is attached to the bottom of the water lily leaf.
This morning all that was left to see was the empty larva casing on the lower side of the leaf.
2007-07-16 @ 10:02