My heart skipped a beat....

I have a long-time customer who lives just outside London: funnily enough, in the suburb where I went to primary and Grammar school. He is a very keen amateur palaeontologist and has had several species of prehistoric arthropod (and a shark!) named after him!

Knowing my interest in dragonflies, a couple of days ago he sent me the image below by e-mail, asking if it was a Four-spotted Chaser. When I opened the attachment I nearly fainted: it is, of course, an American White-tailed Dragonfly! I hastily replied, enquiring where he'd taken the picture. I waited with bated breath: he's just come back to me, saying his daughter had borrowed his camera for a recent holiday in the USA: she must, he thought, have failed to delete the image and it had somehow got mixed in with some wildlife pictures he'd taken in his garden!

In a way, I'm glad the dragon wasn't something I'd missed the chance of seeing...