Third time lucky

Lilypad Whiteface

Normally I write the blog posts in chronological order, but today the best came at the end, so I’ll start there….

Today the dragonfly season finally started for me. And what a start it was… I joined an excursion in the Weerribben, in search for the Dark Bluet and the Lilypad Whiteface. The latter was extinct in the Netherlands and has been rediscovered in the past years. Two years ago an emerging adult was found during the same excursion, although at that time it was only in search for Dark Bluet. Lilypad Whitefaces hadn’t been seen reproducing in decades, so the surprise was great. Unfortunately for me, this individual was found in the afternoon excursion, while I joined the morning one… Last year a small population was found just a couple of hundred meters from the place where the first was found. An excursion was organized, but unfortunately the weather wasn’t that good so we didn’t find any. A bit later Geert and I went to a place where they had been seen earlier, but also in vain.

This spring the weather was bad for dragonflies. Until today I hadn’t seen any at all. And today it was cold and windy, hardly the conditions needed to find Lilypad Whitefaces. So I wasn’t optimistic that we would be successful today. We were already on our way back to our boat, when someone suddenly said: “Here, I’ve got one!!!” A bit in disbelieve, I had a look (together with the other 30 participants), and indeed, a newly emerged Lilypad Whiteface!! Finally I saw one! He wasn’t really close, but with the 300mm/2.8 and 2x converter I managed to get him close enough. A really nice ending of a good day!