Today was a beautiful early fall day and I could not resist the urge to wander down to “our” beaver swamp late this afternoon.
Noticing all of the nice clouds, I tossed my wide angle lens and polarizing filter in my pocket as I headed out the door. Thus, I can actually show those who have not (yet) been here a photo of the place where I have whiled away many enjoyable hours in pursuit of odes over the past two summers.
The ode season is definitely winding down here. There were a dozen or so large odes (darners, most likely) aloft out over the meadow and I watched a couple of female darners ovipositing at the edge of the pond. I noted two or three spreadwings along the edge of the woods and that was about it… except for one rare opportunity that I caught!
Darners are large, spectacular dragonflies that are frustrating to photograph… they rarely perch! However, every once in a great awhile one finds them perched and you get an opportunity!
I was wandering slowly along the edge of the meadow when I flushed a darner mating wheel out of the grass. This is a fairly rare, maybe two or three times a summer, event in itself. Usually the pair flies off and that’s it. You loose track of them, they land high up in a tree or you flush them a second time trying to get a good angle photographically, et cetera, et cetera. Or as Joan would say… “excuses, excuses”!
This time the mating pair landed about ten feet up on the trunk of a nearby tree; a little high to be ideal but one takes what nature provides. I took the extension tube off the 70-300 mm lens and was able photograph them for twenty-five minutes (according to the meta-data). The show ended when the couple parted ways; presumably she headed to the pond to begin ovipositing. They are either Canada Darners or Green-striped Darners… I can’t decide. [UPDATE: Thanks to my friend Kevin and the helpful folks on the Northeast Odonates mailing list (who all agree), we can say that these are Canada Darners.]
I wandered for another hour or so before the sun dipped below the ridge and I headed home. In that interval, I saw a couple more spreadwings ,always at the edge of the woods, and a few grasshoppers among the marsh grasses.
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Hi Frank
Tremendous mating wheel shot. Looks like it could be Aeshna canadensis. It has the deeply indented ALS marking but more importantly they both have the yellow mid-lateral spot. Love the Beaver pond shot. That needs to be big and framed!
Cheers
K
Comment by KDC — 10 September 2012 @ 10:49 AM