From nymph to damselfly, short movie clip.

Today we experienced the first warm day in Holland with temperatures rising over 20 degrees celcius. The last weeks were quite cold and windy so the damselflies in my pond kept safely in the water. Last year they were 2 weeks sooner with their transition from nymph to damselfly.

I opted for a setup that would give me greater than lifezize magnification: The Pentax K5, a Pentax 645 bellows and the Pentax 645 120mm macro lens. Massive in size and it definately looked like I was using a bazooka to shoot a musquito, but I got what I needed and that's what counts in the end ;-)

Below you'll find a short clip from Vimeo where the damselfy is just emerging from it's nymph state.

• Dragonflies and damselflies both belong to the insect order Odonata and have two pairs of wings. Damsels are smaller and have a lighter build than dragons. When resting, they fold their wings over their backs, whereas dragonflies spread their wings out to the side.
• Dragonflies are among the fastest and most manoeuvrable of insects. They can fly forwards, sideways, backwards and hover for extended periods; some can even reach speeds of 35kmph.
• Damselflies are slower (up to 10kmph) and have a more fluttering flight.
• Both have aquatic larval stages called nymphs, which can take several years to become adults. Juveniles are known as nymphs because there is no pupal stage.
• Dragonfly nymphs are similar to the adults but lack their colour and wings.
• Damselfly nymphs tend to hide in sediment or pondweed, and have three gills protruding from the tips of their abdomens.
• The last nymphal stage crawls out of the water, often by climbing vegetation, and the adult emerges from a split in the cuticle. Dragonfly nymphs can crawl some way from the pond; their exuvia (shed skins) are left clinging to vegetation.

Outwitting the fox

Today I took a short stroll through the Rietputten near Vlaardingen to see if there were any typical Dutch winter birds around. 
Seemingly there was quite some work done in the area and a new pond was created. Not a good thing as normally this disturbs the wildlife considerably. 

The weather was nice though so I took a walk alongside the "Volksbos". This piece of forest was planted in 1992 as a protest against the plans to make a garbage dump at that location. 8000 people planted 17.000 trees in that area. Now it's a nice place to walk through with normally quite some interesting bird-life to be found.

While I was walking there, I spotted a fox which was walking in one of the nearby fields. But of course, as soon as he saw me, he fled away in into the forest. Spotting a fox outside the "Amsterdamse Waterleiding Duinen" is always nice, because they are quite elusive and try to avoid contact with humans wherever possible.

I took a walk through the forest and in the meantime he must have returned to the fields again, because I spotted him again when I left the treeline. Same story unfolded, fox fled and I was happy with the sighting. 

But to my surprise, I saw him a few minutes later AGAIN, this time he was running towards me over one of the paths through the reed-lands. He was still about 300 meters away and I had time to lay down in a patch of reed, with just the camera in front of my face. 

Luckily he didn't spot me until he completely filled the frame, only then he turned and fled away through the nearby field. A small dream came through as I still wanted an image of a fox running towards me. Did I get lucky, with a clear background to top it off!