Posts in Category: Odonata
Painted Skimmer
Painted Skimmer, Kennebunk Bridle Path, Kennebunk ME
Painted Skimmer is another early dragonfly in Southern Maine. I glimpsed my first a week ago, but this is the first one that has posed for me, and I found it in, what seemed to me, a very unlikely place…deep in the forest along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. There were some pools, full of moss and ferns and violets, and totally overshadowed by pines and maples, along the path through the forest…but I think of the skimmers as open country, open marsh dragons. Live and learn. This one certainly could not have been better positioned for photography. I saw it in flight, but when it landed in a patch of sun off the trail, it sat there for at least a half hour. I photographed it, then walked to the end of the trail where it meets the road to Mother’s Beach, and it was still sitting on its branch when I got back to it. So, of course, I photographed it some more!
Nikon P900 at 650mm equivalent field of view. 1/500th @ f5.6 @ ISO 100. Processed and cropped for scale in Lightroom.
1st Dragons of the season: 4 Spotted Skimmer
4 Spotted Skimmer, Quest Ponds, Kennebunk ME
The 4 Spotted Skimmer is not the most beautiful of dragonflies…in fact it is not beautiful at all to those who are not fascinated with Odonata, and even then it would probably not make anyone’s list of favorite bugs. It’s main claim to fame is that it is one of the first large dragons to fly around our northern ponds and marshes. I was actually very surprised yesterday, on my first intentional Odonata outing of the season, to find how many dragonflies were already flying. I have been traveling a lot this spring, which has limited my access to the ponds and pools, and I assumed the very late spring we are having would have retarded the emergence. There were hundreds of Dot-tailed Whitefaces (without a doubt our most abundant and longest season dragon), a good number of Green Darners (probably migrating back as adults from further south…but already in mating wheels here in Southern Maine), at least one Chalk-fronted Corporal (another early bug), and something that was probably a Painted Skimmer too far and too fast to id for sure. There might have been at least one other large darner way out over the pond, maybe Canada, but it was too far to see. Not bad, and that was only the 3 inland ponds I patrol. Today I will get down to the fresh water pools along the river near the ocean, and check the beach for Green Darners and Black-Saddlebags coming ashore off the water. 🙂
Nikon P900 at 2800mm equivalent field of view. 1/250th @ f6.5 @ ISO 400. Processed in Topaz Denoise and Lightroom.
Regal Darner
Regal Darner, Washington Oaks Gardens, Palm Coast, FL
I am on my way to Ohio and the Biggest Week in American Birding, but this shot is from the Florida Birding and Photo Fest last week in St Augustine. It is, near as I can tell, a Regal Darner. The shot was taken from 16 feet, at 4000mm equivalent field of view using digital enhancement, hand held, with the new Nikon P900.
ISO 400 @ 1/320th @ f6.5. Processed in Lightroom.
Red Saddlebags!
Red Saddlebags. Estero Llano Grande
In Maine we get an occasional Carolina Saddlebags…the other red saddlebags…and lots of Black Saddlebags, but I am always delighted to see the true Red Saddlebags Dragonfly when I visit Texas. It took 3 trips to Estero Llano Grande State Park World Birding Center south of Weslaco Texas to catch one perched in good light, but it was worth it. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view (1200mm optical plus 2x Clear Image Zoom). Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 250 @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Lenovo Miix 2 Windows tablet.
Female Green Darner
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From the looks of things the flood of Green Darners coming south may be over. This is from last week, at Laudholm Farm, on a particularly busy Darner day. I was able to photograph both male and female Greens as they perched, though the specimens were more than a mile apart. That might give you an idea of the size of the swarm. At both locations, there were 10-15 Darners visible in the air at any given moment. That is a lot of Darners on any day. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 1200mm equivalent field of view. ISO 100 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Green Darner Invasion!
I have never seen as many Green Darners as I have this fall. For weeks now, on a good day, you can see hundreds (probably thousands if you stayed in the right spot long enough) coming through on their way south. They come in swarms. There will be a few Wandering Gliders mixed in, and the occasional Black-saddlebags, but mostly they are all Greens. They bring out what I assume are our resident Canada and Green-striped and Black-tipped Darners to do battle over their territories, but the Mosaic Darners could be migrating with them. Hard to tell. And hard to find one of the Greens perched. I did find one male and one female that sat long enough for photos on my last trip to Laudholm Farms. This is the male.
Sony HX400V at 1200mm and 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 250 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Program with -1/3 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express (web version).
Slender Spreadwing
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The meadows at Emmons Preserve have been very good this summer and last for Odonata. Still a beginner, I have many first sightings and first photos from Emmons. I have, if memory serves, at least one other photograph of this species, but it is rare enough be just a little exciting when I get another. The total lack of pruinocity on the tip of the abdomen and its length and thinness make this almost certainly a Slender Spreadwing, and the light tips on the wings are good for that species too. 🙂
Sony HX400V at 2400mm equivalent field of view. ISO 160 @ 1/250th @ f6.3. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Green-striped Darner
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The business end of a Green-striped Darner. It has been an odd year for Odonata in Southern Maine. Common species have been uncommon…way down in numbers…and some of my best ponds have been particularly unproductive. At the same time, there have been lots of Green-striped Darners, a species that I had not seen here before this summer…though they are definitely here every year…I had just missed them. You could not miss them this year. 🙂 And there have been swarms of Green Darners over the past few weeks. I assume they are migrating down the coast, but yesterday, for instance, over the marsh ponds along the lower Mousam, there were hundreds of Darners…15 and 20 in the air at any moment.
This Green-stripe is at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains, and is my first ever perched GSD. It sat very patiently on this White-birch log while I worked all around it, balancing on beaver clipped saplings over saturated moss at the pond’s edge to get the right angles. This is an actual macro shot (as opposed to a tel-macro), taken quite close in at about 66mm equivalent field of view. ISO 80 @ 1/125th @ f6.3. I used program shift to dial the aperture down to f6.3 for greater depth of field. Sony HX400V.
Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
The spider and the dragon
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When I went out yesterday to mow the front yard, there were a dozen or more tiny, late-season, dark-legged, off-colored Meadowhawks flying low and perching often. Most likely they were female or immature male White-faced Meadowhawks, but I can not be at all certain. As I was photographing this one close in under the eves of the house, it flew up and right into a spider web. I considered freeing it, but then the spider, which had been hiding under the lower edge of the siding on the house, scuttled out and attacked. So be it. Spiders got to do what spiders got to do. And I am almost as fond of spiders as I am of dragonflies. I think this is just one of the grass spiders…a funnel weaver of some kind, though the web seemed sticky enough at least to trap the dragon…or else its legs just got so well tangled that despite best efforts it could not free itself. An hour later the spider had worked the dragon almost completely up under the siding on the house. For scale here, the dragonfly is maybe an inch and a quarter long (3 cm) and I was shooting from about that same distance.
Sony HX400V. 68mm equivalent field of view, macro. ISO 200 @ 1/80th @ f3.5. Processed in Lightroom on my Surface Pro 3 tablet.
Any perch
My wife and I spent the better part of the day at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine yesterday. It is something we have done several times now on or around our anniversary. The CMBG is a treasure, the unlikely result of the ongoing efforts of a group of dedicated people in Boothbay. They have assembled a world class collection of plants in beautifully landscaped settings that always provides a day of pleasure when we visit. We were a few weeks later this year than in past visits and it was interesting to see the difference that few weeks made in what was blooming, and what was not.
A highlight of this trip was the number of insects. There were bees, mostly Bumble, everywhere, and squadrons of Twelve-spotted Skimmer Dragonflies. crickets. Wasps. Several other Odonata. Etc. It sometimes seemed difficult to photograph flowers without catching a bug in the frame. 🙂
This image is, of course, an unusual juxtaposition. Dragonflies, like the Blue Dasher here, are predators and do not generally visit flowers. That is not to say they will not settle on one if it presents itself as a likely perch for hunting. This stand of salmon colored Day Lilies was along the bank above an ornamental pond where many dragonflies were patrolling. And the Blue Dasher is not the only dragon I caught perched among the blooms.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 380mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 320 @ f8. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.