One of the problems of identifying dragonflies is that there are sometimes different 'forms' within a species - which basically means there are variations in both the colours and the patterns. These can be extreme enough to make identification of some individuals quite difficult, as happened with this hawker, seen clinging to the trunk of a gorse bush by the side of a track in Backies.
It doesn't look like any of the 'normal' hawkers but it seemed most likely to be one of the three hawkers recorded from this area, the azure, common and southern. It was very like some forms of the azure and common but the yellow costa on the wings - little bars of colour at the front of the wings near their tips - suggest it's a female common hawker, of the 'blue' form because of the colour of the spots along the abdomen.
This means we have now found two of the three local hawker species. This one was spotted last August, also at Backies: it's a southern hawker, a male of the 'blue form'. Now we've just got to find an azure....
If the hawker posed a bit of a problem it was nothing when compare to this damselfly. There is nothing on the internet or in the very good book 'Britain's Dragonflies' which looks anything like it. However, once again I was helped by there being a limited number of damselflies this far north, the blue-tailed, common blue, large red, emerald, and maybe azure and northern, and once I started searching for an immature form I found it. This is almost certainly an immature male common blue.
It's not been a great month for dragonflies. It's been fairly warm, by local standards, but dragonflies do like a little sunshine, which has been in short supply. Here's hoping for a sunnyAugust.
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