[Daisy]

This is the first year for my little pond.
During this summer, many different dragonflies have visited.
Most of them have come and gone, but these two seem to have taken up permanent residence.
Daisy

[hilberry]

Fab photos, Daisy!

[julie]

Lovely photos Daisy.  I am fascinated by dragonflies, their aerobatic skills are amazing.  The speed with which they twist, stop and turn is wonderful, wish I could do that!!  Will try to get some photos of the dragonflies which visit when they are next at my place.  They are quite numerous in the warmer months, especially late afternoon, evening, whizzing around in the air catching tiny flying insects, very entertaining to watch. 
The dragonflies in your photos appear slightly different , so will be interesting to compare.

[Fleur Pavlidis]

I caught this one sitting by the pool in the MGS garden today. In the background are some of the myriad of mosquito fish which keep the pool free of larvae. I'd say they're an imperitive for any mass of water even though they're not native.

[John J]

While browsing the Internet for something completely different I came across the following web-site; www.friendlyaquaponics.com. On their Home page they have a link called Malaria eradication systems. This brings up a short video about their mosquito fish and the claims they make on their behalf, that is that they have totally eradicated all mosquitos on their property. I have mosquito fish in my small pond but I'm pretty sure there are some mossies still around, but then I don't have the millions of fish that they apparently do!

[John J]

I realise that this post is probably about a year late but I'd never tried to photograph the fish before. It was purely an experiment to see if I could actually catch one of the mosquito fish (it's amazing what you'll do when it's too hot to work and you're at a loose end!). By the way the water-lily is Nymphaea 'Escarboucle'.

[MikeHardman]

A fish photo would be a first for me also, John. Well done.

If you have (or can borrow, at least to start with) a plane polarizing filter, that'll cut out the reflection (eg. of the sky) from the water surface, and give you a much clearer view of the fish.
A cheap way of experimenting with the effect is to put polarizing sunglasses (just one half, obviously) over the lens of your camera. You will need to turn it round until you see the maximum effect. If you see no change while rotating, the sunglasses aren't suitable.

[John J]

Thanks for the tips, Mike. As you have probably realised I'm not a serious photographer, I have a simple point and squirt camera, but I'm game to try new things. I could have cropped out the 'starburst' in the bottom left corner but I quite liked the effect.