Today was a beautiful sunny day in Brussels, Belgium and I had some free time to explore the city. I have been in Brussels for short business trips a number of times in recent years and have already visited many of the attractions in the center of the city. Today I decided to look for some of the kinds of wildlife that I love to photograph, so I made my way to a park that leads to the Botanical Garden of Brussels.
I was encouraged a little when I saw some ducks and turtles in the small pond there and my level of excitement really soared when I spotted some dragonflies flying about. The only problem was that the dragonflies refused to land. When I have my normal DSLR and my favorite lenses, I’ll try to capture in-flight shots, but when I am traveling for work, I tend to leave all that gear at home and use a point-and-shoot camera. My current travel camera is a Canon SX50. It has an amazing zoom lens, but really is not responsive enough to photograph moving dragonflies.
A bit later, I made my way to the opposite side of the tiny pond and discovered the staging area for the dragonflies. Every now and then a dragonfly would perch very briefly on the vegetation. It took quite a few tries, but eventually I got a few shots. I don’t know anything about European dragonfly species, so I can’t really identify the ones that I photographed today. They look pretty similar to ones that I have seen at home and certainly they belong to the same families, but I’d sure welcome assistance in identifying the species.
Today was a day full of unexpected treats. I don’t expect to see bright days full of sunshine during trips to Europe and I didn’t really expect to find dragonflies in Brussel’s urban center.
UPDATE: I have done a bit more research on the internet and it looks to me like the dragonflies in the first two photos below may be Migrant Hawkers (Aeshna mixta).
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Mike Powell 
Hurrah for dragonfly tourism! I’m so glad those skittish Belgian dragonflies finally posed for you. The resulting photos are lovely.
Thanks, Laura. I’m all for dragonfly tourism, though I am not sure that I would ever plan a trip solely on the hope of seeing some rare species, as people sometimes do with birds or bears or other such creatures.
Migrant hawkers–now there’s fodder for a new novel! So many possibilities come to mind…
I like how you think, Gary.
1st one is definitely a Migrant Hawker!! It has the blue band just below the yellow v shape on s2. I’ve been looking for them but have found lots of Southern Hawkers instead. The 2nd might be a Southern, hard to tell from the angle but the colourings look more like it. Think the 3rd is Common Darter or perhaps a Brown Hawker?
Thanks so much for the assist in identification, Sarah. Once you mentioned it, I could see the yellow marking on S2. It was fascinating to be able to find some dragonflies while I was in Brussels, thousands of miles from home (and more familiar dragonfly species).
My pleasure Mike 🙂 There are so many species in the UK that I’ve never even seen! Truly fascinating creatures and I love seeing the similarities and differences between our species in the images you post 🙂
Really great shots with that camera, Mike. What a nice find.
Thanks, Sue. I am pretty happy shooting with the SX50 and might even try shooting in RAW as I tend to do with my DSLR. I was definitely thrilled to find such cool dragonflies while on the road. My only regret was that I didn’t have more time to spend with them.
[…] to the botanical garden of Brussels where I saw the dragonflies that I wrote about in an earlier posting. These ducks sort of look like mallards, but the colors are really different, especially those […]
Amazing