I had not been down to the beaver swamp behind our house for a few weeks so, a couple of days ago I donned “swamp gear” (long sleeve shirt, green “wellies” and a heavy coat of insect repellent) and headed off for a few hours.<\/p>\n
As expected there were many meadowhawks (the exact species I can not say), lots of small damselflies along the edge of the open water and lots of large darners cruising over both the water and the wet meadow.<\/p>\n
On the way down to the swamp I noticed a bee of some sort on a daisy-like flower and got a couple of shots of them while experimenting with a stack of two extension tubes. I went quickly back to my usual single (36 mm) tube as the stack make for very difficult focusing… the zone is very narrow, probably too narrow for hand holding.<\/p>\n
When I got to the swamp I finally got a photo of a darner (they are some of the largest, showiest dragonflies) perched on a tree. These critters have been a\u00a0great\u00a0source of\u00a0frustration\u00a0as I see them often cruising their territories, but they rarely perch and when they do they are in poor locations for photography. This time, I got a number of shots as I closed the distance between “him” and I but, as always happens the critter flies off eventually.<\/p>\n
As I looked up from the viewfinder to see if I could locate him again, I was greatly\u00a0surprised\u00a0to find that he had landed on the right side chest pocket of my shirt! Of course, he was way too close to get a shot of there but I watched him for a minute or two before\u00a0brushing\u00a0him off.<\/p>\n
The other “big finds” for the day were two mating pairs of meadowhawks (within about a dozen feet of each other) deep in the grasses of the meadow. Getting an\u00a0unobstructed\u00a0shot was a challenge. I also \u00a0a pair of \u00a0spreadwings flying in tandem (whether pre- or post-mating, I do not know).<\/p>\n
The meadowhawks all seemed to be the same species (to my un-expert eye); there are two or three species that the books say are difficult\/impossible to distingush without having caught them. The darner will need a bit of work to identify as I an not, at all, familiar with this group. Finally, I think that the spreadwings were spotted spreadwings but again, that is my un-expert opinion.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here are the images:<\/p>\n
[nggallery id=75]<\/p>\n
I had not been down to the beaver swamp behind our house for a few weeks so, a couple of days ago I donned “swamp gear” (long sleeve shirt, green “wellies” and a heavy coat of insect repellent) and headed off for a few hours. As expected there were many meadowhawks (the exact species I […]<\/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":[5,28,62],"tags":[13,12,31],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-odontates","category-other-insects","category-the-new-yard-environs","tag-damselflies","tag-dragonflies","tag-insects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","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=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gorga.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}