August at the lake is time for the big dragonflies… clubtails and darners.<\/p>\n
The most common ode around the lake on Wednesday afternoon was the black-shouldered spinyleg, one of the clubtails. I also observed a number of dragonhunters (another clubtail) and a number of unidentified darners. The last of these only as they flew by at breakneck speed.<\/p>\n
As for damselflies, there were a few male variable darners hanging around the vegetation along the shore; always low to the water. These are stragglers. The bulk of the population mated some weeks ago and are now gone.<\/p>\n
The clubtails and darners are difficult to observe and especially photograph. Both groups are strong fliers and don’t spend much time perched.<\/p>\n
Darners are the worst in this respect. They are really fast in flight, so you don’t get a good look at them. They also tend to perch high in the trees and thus are hard to see and harder to photograph.<\/p>\n
The clubtails are a bit easier… they tend to perch lower down, often on rocks. Thus, getting a good photo is at least thinkable. On the lake they like to perch on the deep water side of the many rocks that emerge from the water.<\/p>\n
My strategy is to watch them carefully and observe where one lands. I can usually observe them with the binos. Often, I can then get the kayak in position to make a good photo before they decide to take flight again.<\/p>\n
Photographing at high magnification from a moving platform (i.e. a kayak) has its own challenges and my “keeper” rate is lower than is typical. However, the “hunt” is an entertaining way to spend a hot sunny afternoon.<\/p>\n
[scrollGallery id=391 – autoscroll = false width = 600 height = 600\u00a0useCaptions = true]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
August at the lake is time for the big dragonflies… clubtails and darners. The most common ode around the lake on Wednesday afternoon was the black-shouldered spinyleg, one of the clubtails. I also observed a number of dragonhunters (another clubtail) and a number of unidentified darners. The last of these only as they flew by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,92,5,111],"tags":[13,12],"class_list":["post-3154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camp","category-monadnock-region","category-odontates","category-summer","tag-damselflies","tag-dragonflies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3154"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3159,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions\/3159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}