Posts in Category: Odonata
Variable Dancer (Violet Dancer). Emmon’s Preserve
The Variable Dancer is, as its name implies, the only Dragon or, in this case, Damselfly which has three distinct subspecies which vary enough in appearance to warrant individual common names. This is the “Violet” Dancer of the north and northeast. There is also the “Smokey-winged Dancer” of the southeast, west to the Mississippi, and the “Black” Dancer of Florida.
But they are all the same species, and intergrades of all verities exist where there is overlap in territory. Maine is far enough from any other variant so it is safe to say this is a pure Argia fumipennis violacea. I like the interesting angle on this shot. It makes me smile, somehow.
The female is much plainer and much more difficult to sort from other Dancer females…except by proximity to the male, and tandem pairs, as in the 3rd shot, help a lot with that.
You have admit (or at least I have to admit) that the violet color on this damselfly is quite striking.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/320th to 1/1000th @ ISO 200 to 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Ebony Jewelwing, Emmon’s Preserve
I intended to get back to Emmon’s Preserve and the little tumbling falls on the Batson River in early August to catch the mating dance of the Ebony Jewelwings that live there, but the press of affairs (as they say) and the fact that we were a car down from mid-July to mid-August kept me from it until yesterday afternoon. There are still Ebony Jewelwings by the rapids, but the mating flights were all over.
Still, an Ebony Jewelwing is a an Ebony Jewelwing…with that unmistakable bright metallic green body flashing in the patches of sun in the forest and over the stream. Except, of course, when it is electric blue.
While you could be forgiven for thinking this is a different species, this is the same bug, just in different light. When the bug moves on, it will be green again. This is a much rarer view, generally you only get a glimpse of this look as the Jewelwing settles briefly in the necessary light, and then flits on. The emerald green is what you see 96% of the time.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast. 1680mm equivalent field of view. 1) –1/3EV exposure compensation, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 160. 2) –1/3EV exposure compensation. f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 320. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Familiar Bluet Mating Wheel
As difficult as it is to imagine (at least for me) today is my 65th birthday. That used to be a real milestone, when it was the legal retirement age, and it still carries some weight. You can not believe the number of Medicare Supplement letters I have gotten in the past 6 months! (Unless you have been there yourself.) But no…I don’t feel any different today than I did yesterday, or significantly different than I did a year ago for that matter. In fact, there are parts of me that I begin to suspect do not age at all. Mostly this is a good thing.
For instance I am still learning…though I am beginning to realize that Damselflies may be right at the edge of my attention span. They are not easy to identify, especially from a photo or in the kinds of looks you get in the field…unless you catch them and use a hand-lens. I am probably not going there.
So I think this is a pair of Familiar Bluets mating. Beyond its ID value, I like the image because of the other elements as well: The spiny seed heads, the arch of the reed, and the way the damselflies are framed by the broken reed in the background.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. (You might have noticed that my conventional –1/3EV has advanced to –1EV over the past few weeks. This is largely due to the damselflies, and specifically to the blues on the flies. They are so intense that they burn to white even at –1/3EV.) 1680mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 125. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Eastern Pondhawk with Prey
I found this female Eastern Pondhawk with prey (I can’t say more than that…I can not make out exactly what she is eating in any of my shots) at Quest Pond in Kennebunk ME. I angled around her, in and out, for several moments attempting to catch a clear view, but her posture, with the wings forward (typical Pondhawk), and her position on the limb, kept the prey well shielded. Several Pondhawks, both male and female, frequent the edge of the forest here where there is a slight opening, about 250 feet from the pond’s edge, and generally shaded.
I like this shot because it shows off the transparency of the wings.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Of Waxwings and Powdered Dancers: Life and Death in the Grass
I have wondered, often, why, with so many dragon and damselflies in residence at Quest Pond, there are not more birds. Of course maybe I just answered my own question, in reverse. Maybe there are so many dragon and damselflies at Quest Pond because there are few birds there. ?? Still, I was not surprised to see a couple of largish birds swooping over the far end of the pond the other day…I was more surprised to see what they were when they came up to the end of the pond where I was. Cedar Waxwings.
There were three, and they set up in an exposed medium-sized ornamental maple at the edge of the pond, and flew out to take bugs just off the ground, then up to the overhanging branches at the edge of the forest that starts 250 feet from the pond’s edge on that side. Then back again. Back and forth, taking insects on about every other swoop. On the perch they were on high alert all the time, watching air above the grass for prey.
Cedar Waxwings are fascinating, and beautiful birds. The silky feathers, the bright colors, the black mask, the big bold eye…what is not to like? Several times as I maneuvered around to get photographs, the Waxwings came within inches of me on the wing. It was exciting. I now realize that my passage through the grass was stirring up the prey, and facilitating their hunt.
What they were catching were Powdered Dancers. I had noticed, and even photographed, these strange damselflies over my days at the pond. They are everywhere in the grass and trees around the pond…by far the most numerous single species. They flutter…they stumble…through the air in weak flights of a few yards at a time. When you compare their flight to, say, a Familiar Bluet…which flies like a high powered, laser guided, helicopter…wings a blur, forward, backward, up, down…effortlessly moving in perfectly straight lines to its goal…you could be forgiven for thinking the Dancers are not damselflies at all. If you get close enough for a photograph (or even a good look) though, you see that they are unmistakably damsels…if rather dull ones.
Most of what I see are the females, and all of them are Powdered Dancers. I have only found a few males. They seem to keep closer to the water, low in the vegetation right at the edge, and I have not see a single one in flight.
Which, of course, is just as well for them when the Cedar Waxwings are in attendance.
There are, in fact, so many Powdered Dancer females around the pond that I do not fear the health of their population if the Cedar Waxwings take a few…on every other pass. It looks to be hard work for the Waxwings for minimum reward (the Dancers are not very big). In fact, I have not seen the Waxwings since that day, so very likely they decided there were easier pickings else where…some fruit tree or berry bush coming into season maybe. Still the drama was very interesting to watch while it was on…and both the Cedar Waxwings and the Dancers have their own unique attractions.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Yellow Garden Spider with Widow Skimmer Wing
If you don’t like spiders you might want to look away!
I was making a lunch hour photoprowl on my Pondhawk-green electric scooter yesterday, walking around Quest Pond to see if any new dragonflies were out, when my work phone rang. I sat down on the bank as it looked like it might be a lengthy call (a three way conference call, and you know how those go) and right there, not 5 feet in front of me in the reeds bordering the pond, just at my sitting eyelevel, was this spider in its web with prey. I could not see, holding the camera up with one hand as I talked, what exactly the spider had caught, but I suspected it was a dragonfly…what else at Quest Pond? It is actually the wing of Widow Skimmer…which has even less meat on it than a chicken wing. I hope the spider was not wanting more than a snack.
For non spider fans, this is the common Yellow Garden Spider, and despite its fierce looks and large size (this female was close to an inch long in the body), it is actually not a bad neighbor, as it generally dines on insects we like even less. I have mixed feelings about the Widow Skimmer…but if was going to take any dragonfly, there are certainly enough Widow Skimmers at Quest Pond this summer so that one will not be missed. If you can get by the fact that it is a spider, you have to admit there is a certain attraction to the bold yellow and black pattern…kind of like police tape at a disaster scene 🙂
And yes, it was a lengthy call.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. 1240mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 1.5x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/640th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Calico Pennant
If the Calico Pennant were a bit bigger, it would almost certainly rank as one of the most stunning of Dragonflies. The cherry red and lacquered black diamond body design…the red saddlebags with their intricate orange veining, ten wing spots and four bright pink Pterostigma (those spots near the wing tips)…it is quite the bug!
However, it is so small, by comparison to some of the dragonflies it is likely to be found among, that it’s beauty can easily be overlooked. This specimen is only about an inch and a half long, very likely larger on your screen than it is in life.
If you will allow me to get all Odonata geeky on you for a moment, those pterostigma are interesting. They are thicker, heavier wing cells ideally placed to damp out the vibration that would otherwise set up in the wing as the dragongly glided. Without the pterostigma, both the speed and length of the possible glide would decrease by 10 to 15%. And you thought (and I thought until this morning when I looked them up) they were just little pink spots.
I have only ever seen the Calico perched up like this twice. Most of the time I find them perched only inches from the ground…on some slightly protruding grass stem.
While these were all taken along the edge of Quest Pond, my only other image of a Calico was taken on the Kennebunk Plains, literally a mile from the nearest body of water.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1 EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical plus 2x digital tel-converter function). 1-3) f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 250-320. 4) 1/200th @ ISO 125.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Quest Pond, Pondhawks, and other wonders for Sunday!
As I mentioned yesterday, my mother-in-law introduced me to a new little pond this week. It is your standard industrial drainage pond, part of the drainage system for a small industrial park, augmented by the fact that the whole facility was built on a pad of fill in more or less wetland and the water has to go somewhere. It is the last in a series of ponds and French drains on the property and it is remarkably healthy for a drainage pond.
The thin boarder of reeds and other water plants along the edge, the grassy verge, the exposed rocks and the gravel path around the pond, and the backing of trees and shrubs, make it ideal Odonata habitat, with easy access for photography as well…and indeed it is alive with dragon and damselflies. The number of species is impressive, but the number of individuals, for Southern Maine, is even more impressive. In several visits over the past two days I have seen:
Green Darner (15-20 at all times over pond and the grassy verge)
Eastern Pondhawk (both male and female in large numbers, 30 or more of each)
Twelve-spotted Skimmer (about the same numbers as Green Darners)
Widow Skimmer (many males and one female so far)
Common Whitetail (males only, and only two that I have seen)
Black Saddlebags (5-10, but very aggressive, and very present)
Blue Dasher (30 or more, and a few so small I am trying to make them into Elfin Dasher or Blue Dragonlets)
Eastern Amberwing (half a dozen)
A single female White-faced Meadowhawk
And one spectacular, and very red, Calico Pennant.
Then you have the damsels:
Azure Bluet for sure.
Familiar Bluet
Orange Bluet (I think)
Eastern Forktail
Slender Spreadwing
And bunches of sprites down on the floating vegetation that I have not begun to sort.
It is an Odonata lover’s feast! This is not a big pond…so watching this man dragonfies over the water at any given time is like watching a soccer match with no goals and no rules. When I close my eyes to sleep at night, my inner vision is full of darting shapes against the light.
I was especially delighted to find a newly emerged Green Darner on Friday. You never get a chance to photograph a Green Darner…oh, maybe a female hung up waiting on a mate, or a mating wheel…both of those I have from California…but not an individual Green unless they are newly emerged and not yet ready for flight.
And the Eastern Pondwalks are rapidly becoming one of may favorite dragonflies. Both male and female are striking in their own ways. The male in the lead image shows off the green face and the subtle blue pruinescence (powdery frost) covering the green body, while the female, without the pruinescence. is exactly the same shade of green as my electric scooter.
This pond is also the first place I have seen Dragonfly cases…the shells left when Dragonflies emerge from the last larva stage. The Green Darners climb high up on reeds or bushes for the transformation, and the shells remain attached to the reed by those strong legs until a sufficiently powerful wind knocks them loose. When I first saw them, I could not imagine what in the world kind of bug they were! With the low sun of late afternoon behind them they have a bizarre (maybe a bit creepy even) beauty of their own.
You will be seeing lots more of the Odonata wonders of Quest Pond over the coming days, I am sure.
And for the Sunday thought. If someone had told me a year ago that the highlight of my 2012 summer would be the discovery of new drainage pond at an industrial estate…
Well, actually I might not have found it that hard to believe given my past experience and what I know about myself, but it does sound unlikely on the face of it.
And, of course, except for the dragonflies and damselflies I would probably not have given Quest Pond a second look. just another drainage pond. And think of what I would have missed!
That is the thing about being awake in the world. Here I am at almost 65 years old (August 14th) and still learning…still finding new stuff to feed the wonder and the delight of being alive. Me and my Pondhawk green electric scooter pulling up to the pond on a sunny afternoon, with my white beard and with my camera on my hip and my Tilly hat hung down my back behind my emerald green helmet…must be quite a sight. But that’s okay. I am having fun.
And it is not like I am finding anything new…all these bugs have been seen and even photographed…by people who know a lot more about them than I do…people who have devoted, or are devoting, their working lives to getting to know everything there is to know about Odonata. I depend on them for what little I know. But, the fact is, this is all new for me…I have never seen and never photographed these bugs…this peculiar beauty…so it fills me with the delight of discovery.
And I think that is the key to being awake. I think our spirits require a constant diet of discovery…I think we are driven to keep exploring this world, these creatures that share it, ourselves, those we know and those we love…to find the newness in it all…the new every day…to find the beauty. I think we are driven, I know I am driven, to share it in these words and photographs. It is my spiritual act. It is the action of my spirit, to bring Quest Pond and Pondhawks and empty dragonfly cases to your attention this morning, confident that those who are in touch with the same spirit, the loving spirit of creation, the spirit of all that is new and all that we can discover…will find the delight in them…will see the beauty…will experience the love. Happy Sunday!
Spot-winged Glider
The Gliders have the widest distribution of any family of Dragonflies. The Wandering Glider, a close relative of this Spot-winged, has the widest range, world-wide, of any dragonfly. It populates the latitudes between 40 south and 40 north (with the exception of most of Europe for some reason), and wanders over the boarder in both directions, repopulating areas every summer where it is too cold for it to winter.
As I say, this one is not a Wandering Glider, but a Spot-winged Glider, the only other member of the Genius Pantala (Rain-pool gliders). The Spot-winged appears have much same range as the Wandering, but is limited to the Americas. I found this one near the rain-pools along the Kennebunk Bridle Path. Fancy that!
The second shot shows the “spots” on the hind-wing that give it its name. They are more developed on some specimens. This shot also shows the other things that really caught my eye…the very bright, and seemingly very large, rust-red eyes…and the way the head is articulated on a very thin, and relatively long, proto-thorax (neck). It makes the head look hollow, with the eyes wrapping so far back. Of course it may be emphasized by the angle of the shot, but it was also very obvious in the field…very odd looking.
In the third shot, notice slightly upturned abdomen (tail) which is characteristic of perched Gliders.
And one more close up, just for fun.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm, 1240mm and 840mm equivalent fields of view. f5.8 @ 1/500th to 1/640th @ mostly ISO 160.
Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Nom nom nom. 12 Spotted Skimmer at lunch.
Nature red in tooth and claw! This is a Twelve Spotted Skimmer devouring what might be an Eldeberry Borer…a smaller beetle at any rate. The 12 Spots are the most present Odonata species in Southern Maine this year. They have been flying more than 2 months now, they are everywhere there is even a large puddle, they are big enough so you can’t miss them, and they are supper aggressive…chasing and driving off all other dragonflies from their patch (or attempting to). And as perch hunters, they are relatively easy to photograph. They spend at least a third of their time hung up on a branch or reed that gives them, and therefore me, a good view.
This one zipped by me at eyelevel and landed on a bush about 4 feet from me. I have hundreds of photos of 12 Spots from this year alone, but I figured I had better shoot it as it was so cooperative. Only when I got the camera up and focused did I see that it was devouring prey. You could almost hear the mandibles click. While it is a bad moment for the beetle, it was a very good moment for the dragonfly.
Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1680mm equivalent (with the 2x digital tel-converter function). f5.8 @ 1/500th @ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.