Southern blues

I have yet to see a southern hawker at my local pond this year but they are around in Gosforth Park.  I have seen several females with normal colouring hunting in the glades in the reserve but was intrigued to find these two.  Both perched briefly, fairly high in the trees but just about within range of my 300mm lens.  The first is a male and to judge from his eye colouring he is immature.  Male southern hawkers generally have mostly lime green abdominal markings with sky blue on the last three segments (S8-S10).  This one is all blue which is a fairly uncommon form (it is described as rare in Smallshire & Swash's field guide).

This one is a female, also immature to judge from her eye colour, but she also has blue abdominal markings   A typical female southern hawker is all dark brown and lime green.  It is intriguing that these two unusual colour forms were side by side.  I'll try to find them again later this week to see if they retain this colouring as they mature.

For comparison, here are typical male (top) and female (below) southern hawkers from a previous year.

In many dragonflies immature males have colouring similar to females and in several species male-type colouring occurs in females.  I'll keep an eye out out for a southern hawker on my local pond.