I’m on an odonata roll! Last week my first Small red-eyed damsel, this week my first Ruddy darter, though I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t know it was a Ruddy darter when I took this photograph. Initially, I thought I was seeing my first Common darter of the year. But, when I got home and looked more closely at the couple of photos I got, I realised it didn’t look right for a Common darter. This dragonfly had all-black legs (no yellow stripe down them) and the top of the thorax was all one colour (no contrasting stripes). I consulted my book and thought I’d worked it out but sent my photo to the county recorder for dragonflies to check. His response came back fairly quickly – it was a Ruddy darter (Sympetrum sanguineum), a female so not ruddy in colour as the male is. The British Dragonfly Society website has excellent photos of both genders, as well as comparison shots with other dragonflies, which I find really useful.