Wildlife Garden Achieved

Today I am jubilant.

jubilant: feeling or expressing great happiness and triumph.

My aim of a wildlife garden which would attract pondlife including damselflies and dragonflies is really coming together. Since we created the pond I have seen dragons and damsels in the garden, but this is the first year that I have seen damsels actually living in my pond and emerging from it. It’s brilliant! And it’s not even just the damsels that have me feeling jubilant – there are frogs, newts, pondskaters, water crickets, diving beetles, as well as spiders, hoverflies, bees, butterflies, birds etc. etc. I haven’t been for a walk this weekend because it kept raining, but in between showers I was able to pop out to the garden and enjoy nature right there on my doorstep. And then this afternoon it brightened up and I just didn’t want to leave 🙂

Today I was lucky enough to see 2 more damsels emerging.

This one must have very recently emerged from its larval skin as its wings were still all folded tight:

This one, nearby, hadn’t yet burst out of its larval skin:

Due to a sudden downpour I missed the 2nd one bursting out, but I got another photo of it a little while later (with umbrella in tow):

The first damsel had since thinned out considerably and had fully expanded its wings, but was still looking rather ghostly:

Here’s some more of damsel 1’s development (I think damsel 1 is a female Azure Damselfly):

Here’s some more of damsel 2’s development (damsel 2 is a Large Red Damselfly):

Not only did I get to witness more emergence, but Bruce also spotted a larva still in the pond, so I managed to get some shots of that too! It was kindly sitting on a Frogbit leaf 🙂

As this post is already rather large, I’ll save the rest of my jubilation for another post! 🙂

Inspired by the Weekly Photo Challenge: Jubilant