Green-eyed or Norfolk Hawker Aeshna isoceles

Far Ings, Barton-on-Humber June 19th 2023

Wandering round the pits east of the Humber Bridge on the afternoon of June 18th I noticed an alert on Birdguides, Norfolk Hawker far Ings one mid-afternoon. The dodgy knee had to do some rapid walking back to Waters’ Edge car park and then a drive down to Far Ings with cloud thickening and rain threatened for early evening. First signs were not good, no-one knew who had seen it and more importantly where so I wasted the first half an hour trying to find the finder as it were and looking in likely spots. By luck I then saw Darren Wozencroft and he had images as he was the finder - quickly armed with info of where he had seen it I was off - as it happened I looked in the wrong spot but after 10 minutes a Norfolk Hawker appeared in front of me in the channel and flew around for about 20 minutes before the weather deteriorated but it was never good enough to get an image. Darren arrived and pointed out that where he had seen the dragon earlier was 200m away and he went down there and confirmed two. This on the face of it was an incredible record but the species has broken out of its East Anglian stronghold and is now quite common in Kent and several south coast counties with vagrants turning up elsewhere and a couple of years ago I chased down south to Willow Tree Feb to try and see a couple that were only the 2nd and 3rd Lincolnshire records following one at Messingham in August 1997.

A nice addition to my Lincolnshire odonatan list but it would have been nice to get some images. Roll forward to Monday 19th and after a hospital appointment news that Richard Willison had photographed a Norfolk Hawker in the same spot as I had seen the one the previous evening; load the camera and get down there but it was 26C with glaring sun and little ode activity. then about 18:00 a little cloud dropped the temperatures and the Norfolk Hawker duly appeared in front of us perching regularly and chasing off anything in its territory including Four-spotted Chasers, Brown Hawker and at one stage a Cetti’s Warbler! a rather brave move. The light was impossible looking into t he bright sun and there was no possibility of moving position so the images below are best of a tricky bunch.