My very own dragonflies

I have never seen anything like this before.  Normally I have to go out and about to find dragonflies but this time they came to me.  Last Thursday I was bringing in the washing when I noticed a dragonfly on the wall opposite the front door.  It isn't something I often see here so I went in to get a camera.

When I came out I could see two, then three, then five.  Every time I looked there seemed to be more dragonflies, all common darters.

Then I saw more on the dead sycamores behind the wall.  I counted at least 11 common darters soaking up the late afternoon sunshine.

While I was watching a large blue hawker flew past, hunting round the trees.  I was pretty sure it was a migrant hawker and I followed it round the garden hoping for a photo but eventually I lost sight of it.  So I returned to the darters to find they had been joined by a male southern hawker!

In this view it looks as though it has eight wings.

After resting for several minutes the southern hawker flew across the garden and was buzzed by a migrant hawker that had been resting by the gate, so I waited for the migrant to settle again and got my photo.

This was the most amazing half an hour.  Eleven common darters, one southern hawker and one migrant hawker, all within 10m of my front door.  I saw more dragonflies in 30 minutes here than I have done in the past 30 years.  On Friday the weather was equally good so I was ready and waiting with the camera but only two common darters showed up.  Quite what attracted them all to this one spot the day before I don't know but I'll now be keeping a close look out every time I open the door.