Posts in Category: Odonata
Calico in Obelisk Posture
Well, almost in full Obelisk posture…but then this is Maine, and even in mid-summer, the sun is never straight up. The theory, with some lababoritory testing to back it, is that pointing the abdomen at the sun like an Obelisk and raising the wings helps to avoid overheating on hot days by limiting exposure to the direct rays of the sun. The behavior has been observed in most dragonflies that hunt from a perch. This a a little Calico Pennant which I found out on the shores of Kennebunk Plains Pond on our hottest day so far. Note that in this position the dark patches on the Calico’s wings also provide shade for the thorax.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/500th @ ISO 250 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Racket-tailed Emerald
Now here is a creature for you. Talk about wildlife! This is wild. Or that is what I think. 🙂
I have only ever seen the Racket-tailed Emerald in one small pool on the land-ward side of the Kennebunk Bridle Path, maybe a mile inland from the mouth of Mousam River, but I see at least a few there every June/July. They are pretty steady fliers, constantly patrolling the pool, but they do occasionally perch. Last Saturday was a good day to catch one perched.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1/640th @ ISO 800 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Cropped for scale.
Female Widow Skimmer
It is Widow Skimmer season out by Old Falls on the Mousam. The females are always first, and when they emerge they are very present, especially here in the brush above the stream.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 1200mm equivalent (600 optical plus digital tel-extenter). Shutter preferred @ 1/640th. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And as a health update: I survived my first ever night in the hospital (lifer!) and am now waiting for today’s tests. How civilized that hospitals today have wifi for their guests!
Painted Skimmer
Among the early season dragonflies, the Painted Skimmer is certainly a standout. It is big, for one thing, probably the biggest dragon in flight in mid-June in Southern Maine (excepting the few Green Darners I have seen so far…and this year at least as we are late with all the Onadata). The males, in particular, flash with orange fire as they fly over the marsh, and up close both males and females are a feast of pattern with their wing-spots and colored veins. I saw a few in flight on Sunday when I went dragon-prowling down by the mouth of the Mousam River in the marsh pools, but none perched close enough for a good photograph. I went back yesterday afternoon, specifically to see if I could do better, and was blessed to find one male and one female perched in easy reach of my lens. The male is on top here, and is the much oranger of the two.
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred at 1/640th. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Aurora Damsel (on Buttercup)
It is always exciting for me to find a new bug…especially one as beautiful as this Aurora Damsel. It is a member of the Pond Damsel family, along with Bluets, Dancers, and Forktails, but in this pose (typical) it looks more like a spreadwing because of the way it holds its wings. It’s markings are so unique though, that, once identified for the first time, it is hard to mistake it for anything else. It is simply one of those bonuses of photographing nature that it landed on the buttercup, and stayed long enough for me to capture it. 🙂
(The red dots on the back of its head are reflections of the sun, not part of its pattern.)
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 1200mm equivalent (600 optical plus 2x digital extender). Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
Eastern Forktail. Happy Sunday!
I leave this afternoon for a week of travel in Germany, Austria, and maybe a day in Hungary, so these posts may be erratic over the next few days. It is hard to predict how much wifi I will have, and I can not afford a lot of data on my phone. We shall see. I hope to have abundant photo ops, but it is mainly a business and birding trip (or maybe I should say a “business of birding” trip).
This is an immature female Eastern Forktail. Eastern Forktails are among the earliest Odonata to fly in the spring, and they are certainly all the action around the ponds in Kennebunk right now. I am wondering if a few overwinter, or migrate in early in the spring from locations where they can overwinter, since I am seeing fully pruniose females along with the immatures and the males. I do not think they have been flying long enough here to have developed the degree of pruniosity that I am seeing. ?
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. Shutter preferred. 1 /640th @ ISO 250 @ f6.7. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
And for the Sunday Thought. I gave at least a few moments extra thought to what image I wanted to leave you with as I start my European adventure. Something homey? Something particularly Maineish? And in the end, I am not sure why this image is appropriate. It just felt right. It speaks to me. I hope it speaks to you. And that is, at its best, what photography does. It communicates at a non-verbal level, without the need for words…for analysis…almost, one might say, without the need for reason. Vision to vision. My vision to your vision. Pure and simple. In that sense, is it, somehow, more of a spiritual communication? Of course, I am ignoring all the technical apperatus…camera…software…etc…and the considerable technique involved in producing the image. Certainly, on some level, the process of photography is as complex as reasoned argument, or certainly as complex as day to day discourse. Perhaps it is not that photography is a more spiritual medium…it is that, too often, we forget that any communication is spiritual. My spirit to your spirit. Pure and simple. Happy Sunday!
And do watch for whatever I am able to post from Europe.
Springtime Darner
The is nothing quite like the excitement of your first Odonata sighting of the spring! Dragonfly on the wing!
Okay. I get it. Not everyone shares my enthusiasm for dragonflies and damselflies, but still, you must have some empathy with a seasonal first…the first Robin in the yard…the first crocus…Lilacs blooming…the first bike ride of the spring…opening day at the golf club? Something must tickle your seasonal nose like the first sneeze of hay fever season! For me, these past few years, it has been the awakening of the Odonates. I haunt the ponds and pools where I have seen them past summers, hoping against hope, that the water is finally warm enought, that the hours of sunlight long enough, so that some brave nymph will crawl out of the water and transform into a full flying dragon or damsel. Yesterday, a visit to the warm, sunlit meadows along the Boston River at Emmons Preserve in rural Kennebunkport had its rewards. I saw three dragons on the wing…got decent photos of two…and both of those were new bugs for me! It does not get much better than that!
This is the Springtime Darner (appropriately named 🙂 . I had some difficulty identifying it as it looks like a Mosaic Darner…but is in a totally different part of the book. It is also a tendril…a freshly emerged bug…so it’s blue abdominal spots are not as blue as they will be tomorrow. (Visually, they were bluer than in the photo.)
These are also among my first dragonfly shots with my new wildlife rig…the Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. That is 600mm equivalent that I can push to 1200mm using the Digital Tel-converter in the camera, as I did here. I am used to the much longer zoom on the Canon SX50HS, which started at 1200mm optical, with digital extension to 1800 and 2400mm equivalents. Still, I am hoping the increased image quality of the larger sensor in the Olympus Micro-four-thirds camera will more than make up for the extra effort of getting closer (when I can get closer). I am certainly happy with this shot.
1/640th @ ISO 640 @ f7.1. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet.
California Darners!
It is still, possibly, weeks before the first real Dragonfly hatch in Southern Maine. I will get out to check the ponds today. I did, however, get my first dragonfly fix of the season in California this past week with this pair of what I make to be California Darners from Arcata Marsh Wildlife Center. Fine specimens and the first test of my new camera rig on dragonflies. I think it might work : )
Olympus OM-D E-M10 with 75-300mm zoom. 600mm equivalent. At least 2 of these use the 2x digital extender for 1200mm equivalent field of view. Shutter preferred. 1/800th @ f6.7 @ various ISO. Processed in Snapseed on my tablet. Assembled in Pixlr Express.
Roseate Skimmer. Happy Sunday!
On Friday I joined the Bayou LA Batre field trip at the Alabama Coastal Birding Festival. We visited several birdy locations in the Bayou La Batre area. I posted an illustrated trip report on gobirding.us. One of the highlights of the trip for me was the number of dragonflies bunched up along the coast as they migrate south for the winter. There were more Black Saddlebags than I have ever seen in one place at one time, a few Red Saddlebags, Green Darners (of course), and lots of Wandering Gliders. The best for me though, were the dozens of Roseate Skimmers I found in a drainage ditch along one of the roads we walked while looking for birds. We don’t get Roseares in Maine. I have only seen them in Texas up to this trip. Lovely bugs!
Canon SX50HS. 1800mm equivalent field of view. Program with iContrast and -1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Snapseed on the Nexus 7.
And for the Sunday Thought. With my growing interest in dragonflies added to my interest in butterflies it is becoming obvious that I no longer fit the traditional birder mold. On the Bayou La Batre field trip, I spent as much time looking at and photographing dragonflies and butterflies as I did looking at and photographing birds. I often found myself way behind the group as I was waylaid by an interesting bug. On the long (or short).stretches of trail or roadside between birds and likely birding spots, while the real birders truged and chatted, only half paying attention, I was still on full alert, checking out every bug I came across. I am sure some of the real birders in the group got tired of my pointing out Saddlebags and Skimmers, Fritillaries and Long-tailed Skippers. One lady asked if I were more of an entomologist than a birder. I had to explain that my interest in birds was a keen as ever, but I supposed it was fair to say that I was becoming more of a general naturalist, with interests in bugs and reptiles and wildflowers and trees…with the whole living world. If makes me the odd man out on birding field trips, so be it. If they are not interested in the Roseate Skimmers in the drainage ditch, it is their loss. 🙂
To me it is the natural continuation of the outward turn that birding is part of. Once you get your eyes of yourself and your inner drama, and focused on the wonder and variety of the Creation that we are emersed in, even if you begin, as many do, with birds, how do you stop there? Why would you stop there? There is so much to see and so much to learn. For the naturalist, there is, literally, never a dull moment in the field.
And if, like me, your interest is, in fact, your offering to the Creator God, an act of worship and fellowship, then certainly you would not want to miss the Roseate Skimmers in the ditch.
Happy Sunday!
Eye-candy! Clamp-tipped Emerald
This is one those encounters that keeps me looking for and at dragon and damselflies. I will never become an Odonata expert. There is just too much to learn, but I totally enjoy photographing the species I find around home and in my travels. This is, I am pretty sure, Â the Clamp-tipped Emerald. There are lots of Emerald Dragonflies…all with the characteristic green eyes. According to Odonata Central, the Clamp-tipped is not recorded for York County Maine, so I am going to have to check my ID, but the male appendages on this bug are pretty distinctive, and everything else about it is right.
Whatever it is though, it is certainly an amazing creature. And it does not hurt that it chose to perch among the red berries either! Emmons Preserve (Kennebunk Land Trust) in Kennebunkport Maine.
Canon SX50HS at 2400mm equivalent field of view from about 8 feet…handheld. Program with -1/3EV exposure compensation. f6.5 @ 1/640th @ ISO 800. Processed in Lightroom.