This dragonfly is one of the easiest to recognise, with its characteristic shorter and broader abdomen.
The Male - shown above here - is blue with dark markings, with bright blue eyes, and the female is similarly shaped and patterned, but with greenish yellow body and eyes.
This lovely creature (Acisoma panorpoides),is also called the trumpet tail, or grizzled pintail, and it is a species of dragonfly in the family Libellulidae.
Normally quite shy, but it has a very weak and short flight and keeps closely to the foliage and reeds, so perseverance pays off when tracking this one to photograph, as it will land nearby and often does not move.
The photos here were taken around 10am on an overcast day at Lion's Park, SaiKung on the 26th May, 2018. I was lucky that I disturbed this male from a reed frond, and he landed on the water lily about 3meters in front of me. I was using a 100mm macro lens with a ring flash (mainly for insect close ups), but this set up also allowed me to capture a brighter subject, with excellent definition, whilst keeping the darker moody background, in a place where i could not use a tripod (above a pond), and without the shadows normally thrown when using flash. It also meant i could lean forward one handed to get closer, and not worry about camera shake, as i was shooting at 1/200s. This is a 50% crop of the original, and reduced to a 4mb file for blog/facebook, whereas the original TIFF file has even greater details.
