I have been enjoying getting out most days on Froggy the Scoot (my frog-green electric scooter) on short lunch-hour and after-work photoprowls and dragonfly hunts, but some places are just beyond the range of the batteries in Froggy. Emmon’s Preserve, along the Batson River beyond Cape Porpoise (and managed by the Kennebunkport Land Trust) is just such a place. At something over 8 miles one way, it has to wait for a Saturday when I have a car available (rare in these days of driving-to-work daughters). It takes some planning.

I did manage a pilgrimage to Emmon’s yesterday, in hopes of finding the Ebony Jewelwings in flight, though it is a few weeks earlier than I photographed them there last year. The Batson flows down through mixed forest over a series ledges…little waterfalls and rapids…alternating with deep pools in the Preserve, so it is ideal Jewelwing habitat, and indeed, the male Ebonys put in an appearance soon after I arrived, as the sun worked its way through early clouds and the branches of the overhanging trees. Oddly I did not see a single female yet. I will get back there in the next few weeks to try to video some of the mating behavior.

There are few damselfies so striking as the Ebony Jewelwing. Jewelwings are large (comparatively speaking) broad-winged members of the Odonata family (damsel- and dragonflies), and carry their intensely colored wings vertically above the body most often when perched. They fly much more like butterflies than dragonflies, with a lot of flop and flutter, in short flights from perch to perch, and in even shorter flights as they flycatch from perches. It takes a lot of mosquitoes to keep a a hunting Jewelwing in flight, and, all things considered, I am very much on the side of the Jewelwings. 🙂

In the Ebony, the large black wings that give them their name are spectacular, but no more so than the metallic body flashing in the sun, most often an intense emerald, but sometimes, in certain lights, electric blue.

There is a level of intensity to the green that the camera just does not catch…though some of the shots from yesterday come as close as I have come.

Since the Ebony Jewelwings tend to return to favored perches even after flycatching it is easy to come back from Emmon’s, as I did, with way too many images…but they are, I think, worth the effort…even when it involves planning around drive-to-work daughters.

And for the Sunday thought: While I certainly see evidence that some process similar to that described by evolutionists is operating in nature, it will never be enough, to me, to explain the Ebony Jewelwing.

The Ebony Jewelwing is just too much fun…too whimsical, too utterly beautiful in such unlikely ways…for me to believe that it is the result of any process that is based on random chance and natural selection, no matter how long you give the process to work. I mean, for a simple little mosquito eating machine, or even organism, the Ebony Jewelwing is certainly overly ornate, well beyond any idea of practical functionality…delightful in a way that requires intelligence and a larger view of existence to appreciate, or even to imagine…or that is the way I see it.

I don’t need to go to nature for evidence that there is a creator (though I enjoy doing so)…the knowledge that there is a creator, and one who is loving all we are and all we know into existence, is inescapable in a relationship with Christ…but if I did need more evidence, then the Ebony Jewelwing would be pretty much enough, all by itself, for me. Happy Sunday!