It has been a difficult week. I walked along the local river bed looking for wildlife and struck very lucky with what I saw. My problems came when it came to identifying the species of damselfly I had photographed. Now in this part of Western Australia there are only ten species so you’d think it should be relatively straight forward. But, no it is not. For quite a few of the species counting the number of abdominal segments is a key feature. Now that’s not a huge problem because I can do that at home when looking at the photo. The problem I had was when you have to look at the “anal appendages” according to The Complete Field Guide to Dragonflies of Australia (Theischinger, Hawking and Orr). Now it’s hard enough to get a damselfly to sit still long enough for a photo, but getting one to remain still for a proctological examination – well good luck with that! I wonder if David Attenborough has a whole team of assistants who do this for him?