I've even been doing a bit of Springwatching myself. I took these photos of damselflies at the edge of the lake at Aldenham Country Park on Sunday.
We noticed quite a few damselfly nymphs crawling out of the water whilst we were having our lunch and quite a few new emerged adults too, clinging to the concrete dam whilst waiting for their new wings to harden up.
There were also empty nymph skins just left lying where their former owners had crawled out of them.
And then I spotted this one guy with a little split across his back. I waited a few minutes and saw something absolutely miraculous.
You can't get anything more brand new than this and it's absolutely perfect, down to the tiny legs which have emerged from the legs of the nymph like fingers from a glove and just compare the milky eyes of this insect with the eyes of the slightly older damselfly above. Amazing.
