dragonfly

Did I already mention that I spend a lot of time standing by the pond, just watching? Water beetles, tadpoles, water striders, countless different "flies", the occasional frog -- there's always so much going on!

When a dragonfly makes an appearance, I'm extra-excited though! A few times every year I see these large, cool fliers in my garden -- maybe because of the stream? -- but I hope to see a lot more of them now that I have a body of water they can enjoy.

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I read that they love perching on sticks that reach out over the water, and this one seemed to be looking for just the right place to land. It tried a reed but it was too vertical. So was the nearby rebar pole:

So I stuck a bamboo cane into the ground angled over the water, and within 10 seconds the dragonfly was upon it!

So I just took photos for a while.

This is the common white-tailed dragonfly, Plathemis lydia. It's also a male. Bugguide is your friend in cases like this if you don't have an insect ID book.

I'm hoping this is just the first of many that I get to photograph this summer!

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