This has been a really wonderful year of damselflies. Today the Banded Demoiselles were flitting about.watching them on a shallow stretch of water one performed a really strange manoeuvre. It literally threw itself onto the surface of the water and vibrated it’s wings making ripples . After a while it hung from a twig presumably to dry out !
Reading about this behaviour it seems this is a courtship move, it describes the male as sometimes ‘throwing’ himself onto the water at the oviposition site. If the female responds the male lands on the female wing and mating occurs. This did not happen to the male we saw he threw himself on the water no female attention just wet wings …. better luck next time !
Drying out after his dip !
NATURE TABLE EXPLORER 