Posts in Category: Odonata
Lancet Clubtail
Lancet Clubtail Dragonfly: Forever Wild for All Sanctuary, Kennebunk, Maine, USA — I made an off-hand remark in one of my posts recently that the Nikon P700 (which I recently found “used like new” on Ebay) might become my go-to camera for Dragonflies. When asked, by one of my readers, “why?” I told him that it was the extra reach of the 1440mm lens from 7 feet…being able to fill the frame with a dragonfly at that distance makes dragonfly photography much easier…but I had forgotten the main reason I like a small-sensor superzoom bridge camera for insects: depth of field! The small sensor means that at the equivalent field of view of a 1440mm lens, you have the depth of field of a 258mm lens. That is pretty close to the same depth of field you get with the Sony Rx series at 600mm equivalent…and way more depth of field than you would get with a larger sensor camera at anything like that magnification. That means that I can get frame filling shots of dragonflies with almost the whole bug in focus…even head on shots like this one. That is a huge advantage if you are attempting to identify dragons from photos, or to take photos which show identification features. Anyway…this is, as above, a Lancet Clubtail (all my dragonfly ids are “subject to correction by anyone who knows better”, always 🙂 Still, I am pretty confident of this one. The Lancet is one of the earliest flying clubtails, and, in fact, probably the most abundant clubtail we have here in southern Maine, so in early June I am pretty safe with that id. Nikon B700 at 1440mm equivalent. Program mode. Vivid Picture Control and Low Active-D Lighting. -.3EV. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Bluets
Boreal or Northern ?? Bluets: Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Maine, USA — There were a lot of Bluets at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area this week. I can’t say that I examined every one, but they all seemed to be Boreal/Northern by the largish eyespots and general pattern of the abdomen. I am not honestly sure how to distinguish Boreal and Northern from any distance and I am open to correction even there. 🙂 Many were already paired up adn ready to drop eggs. Nikon B700 at 1440mm equivalent. It is nice to have a camera in hand again with that kind of reach again so I am not always cropping the center out of my Sony Rx10iv 600mm shots. 🙂 Program mode with auto everything. -.3EV Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Chalk-fronted Corporal
Chalk-fronted Corporal: Day Brook Pond, Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area, Kennebunk, Maine, USA — The Chalk-fronted Corporal is among the first dragonflies to take wing in any number in Southern Maine. Day Brook Pond had its share yesterday already. Nikon B700 at 1100-1440mm equivalent. Program mode. -.3EV. The white pruinosity (the chalk-like coating on the throax) really sets off the hydraulics at the base of the wing. All those tiny pumps allow the dragonfly to move and shape each wing, and each segment of wing, independently…giving them an amazing agility in flight.
Black-tipped Darner
Black-tipped Darner, Kennebunk, Maine, USA — I was out photographing the foliage at a pond along Rt. 9 in Kennebunk on a misty, cloudy day when this darner flew up from the shoreline and, after hovering a while in front of the branch, landed in plain sight. Of course, I had the wrong camera with me, so I could only hope it would sill be there when I got back from getting the right camera from my ebike in the parking area. It was was 🙂 And I am pretty sure it is a Black-tipped, though Shadow is another possibility, (and given the variation in thorax and abdomen patterns, even some of the other darners are more remotely possible). I am not an expert by any means. But, I think, Black-tipped Darner. Whatever it is, it is missing the feathery cerci at the tip of its abdomen. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Confusing Red Meadowhawks of Autumn
It is the season for small red Meadowhawks, or maybe it is just that the Autumn Meadowhawks are so abundant right now that they draw attention to the other, closely related, species. Meadowhawk identification is not for the faint hearted, but I will take a stab at it. I think I have here, top to bottom, Autumn, with its yellowish legs, White-faced, and Ruby. They were all taken at the same small pond that drains the parking lot at the Southern Maine Medical Center in Kennebunk, Maine. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Blue Dasher, with sparkles.
Sometimes it is the “other” stuff in a photo that makes it’s appeal. In this case a portrait of a Blue Dasher dragonfly on a reed at the pond at Southern Maine Medical Center here in Kennebunk is transformed by the sparkles on the water, and what the lens does to them. The circles are actually refraction patterns formed when the light, reflecting off the water behind the dragonfly, passes through the diaphragm of the lens (the little hole that controls how much light gets to the sensor). The pattern they make lifts this dragonfly portrait out of the ordinary. Or that is what I think anyway. 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Eastern Amberwing
My only reliable spot for Eastern Amberwings is Roger’s Pond along the Mousam River here in Kennebunk, Maine. I am sure they are elsewhere in the area but I have never found them. This seems to be the season for them in Southern Maine. This week the ones close to shore where I could photograph them were all males…vigorously defending territory from each other and attempting to avoid the larger dragons, Widow and Twelve-spotted Skimmers, on patrol. It is not an easy life when you are among the smallest of dragonflies 🙂 Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Calico Skimmer on Blazing Star
We have been having one of our southern Maine spells of hot summer weather and I have not, honestly, been inspired to push through the heat to do much photography. It is all I can do to get my exercise bike ride in. 🙂 I was determined to get out yesterday and, as I got my camera ready and got myself on the bike, I was thinking that a dragonfly or a butterfly on Blazing Star would make the trip worth-while, and was perhaps a reasonable expectation out on the Kennebunk Plains these early days of August. The Blazing Star was not as far along as I had though it might be, based on early blooms in late July, but I was still rewarded with my shot…just as I had foreseen it. The Calico Pennants are getting smaller and darker as the season progresses, but still put on a good show, and the Blazing Star is just barely beginning to open, but still…it is undeniably a dragonfly on Blazing Star. 🙂 High, gusty, winds keep the Calico Pennant in constant motion. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.
Ebony Jewelwings in the sun
When I visited Emmon’s Preserve in Kennebunkport, Maine at the beginning of July there were just three Ebony Jewelwings enjoying the rapids where the Baston River tumbles down over some rock ledges between two pools…and I felt blessed to find them. On the next to the last day of July there dozens, both males and females. (And I still felt blessed to find them.) The males were busy doing their spinning dance over the water and defending territories, and the females, as is their habit, sat on sunny leaves and watched them. There is nothing quite like an Ebony Jewelwing in the sun. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos. There is a poem to go with this, already shared on its own right yesterday. 🙂
7/31
The dappled shade is as deep
as ever where the Baston River
(more a brook really) tumbles
peat-brown down rock ledges
between two pools...but the
long dry spell of late July has
shrunk the flow from its loud
spring song to a whisper all
but lost in mossy cover of the
rocks. And still the Ebony
Jewelwings dance over the
tiny rapids, flashing metallic
green and blue beneath jet
black wings as they fly in and
out of the dapple, inches
from the water, spiraling up
to decorate the stream-side
branches where the sun strikes
through. The males circle
each other over the water
in an intricate choreography,
contesting territory, and then
return to perch almost side
by side, a few feet apart, each
safe in his own tiny empire.
But the flash of it, the dance
of it, over the dark diminished
waters of the Baston, here
at the end of a dry July, is
always something to behold.
Martha’s Pennant
Out at Day Brook Pond on the Kennebunk Barrens Nature Conservancy (what used to be the Kennebunk Plains Wildlife Management Area), we always have an abundance of Calico Pennants, from early in the spring to late in the fall. Other Pennants come and go. Right now we have emerging Halloween Pennants (previously featured here) and on my last visit I found one Martha’s Pennant. The Martha’s Pennant I tend to think of as “that other Pennant.” It is not nearly as colorful as either the Calico or the Halloween. If not for its very Pennant like perch, I would have trouble identifying it…and I do actually, almost every year. It did not help that this one was hanging just at the far edge of the emergent vegetation in the pond, stretching the limits of my 600mm lens. Sony Rx10iv at 600mm equivalent. Program mode with my custom birds and wildlife modifications. Processed in Polarr and Apple Photos.