Emperor Dragonfly

This afternoon I went for a walk round the Reading University lakes.  It has been a few weeks since I was last up there and the summer is definitely coming to an end: lots of greenery, few flowers, and the long grass has been mown and is strewn untidily,  slowly turning brown on the slopes leading down to the water.  The lakes seemed very muddy, maybe there is some building work going on somewhere, and there were only a few sad mallards moping around the margins.  At this subdued time of the year, one of the few places were you can still find lots of flowers and insects is along the western edge of the top lake.  Here I came across an emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) calmly devouring a bug.  As I watched, the bug's wings and hind legs disappeared into the dragonfly's maw.  The sun came out for just a couple of minutes enabling me to take a few decent photos.  On the walk back I was fiddling with my camera, looking through the photos I had taken, when a passing woman asked what there was to take photos of on a dull day like this, and I told her about the blue dragonfly.