A beautiful faux stained glass dragonfly flitting in the grasses and cattails of a wetlands pond. These little creatures are also called Mosquito Hawks because they love to feast on those pesky mosquitos. Hope you enjoy this latest creation.
I once took a dragonfly for a swim in a lake while he rode on my uplifted finger. True story! Now I know I can swim with one arm in the air. What a great memory.
Seeing a lot more #dragonflies stopping in the garden around the house these days. Best I can determine this one is a Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) a member of the Skimmer family.
Turns out that I had an even better shot of that vagrant darter dragonfly in the garden today, with its face in focus & the lens flare sunbeam more squarely anointing it as the chosen one 🤷♂️
By contrast (or lack of it) this is a dragonfly so camouflaged that you could easily walk past without noticing. There are some faded yellow patches on the side but overall it is nut brown just like the dried seed heads it is resting on.
A rather old Common Darter (Sympetrum striolatum).
Small wildlife seen on a hike near a stream. The main trail mostly ran along the chaparral-covered hillside just outside the riparian zone, but a few branches went down through the trees to the stream.
The lizard was well-camouflaged as it skittered around the tree trunk, in contrast to the two #dragonflies (a vivid blue dancer and a flame skimmer -- you can probably guess which is which!) There were quite a few small blue dancers (like half this length!) flying around the trail uphill from the stream bed. This one was resting on a wooden beam placed across the stream as a bridge. Finally, a checkered white #butterfly in front of the invasive mustard plants that were all over the lower parts of the chaparral.
Bit surprised to see, well, hear this blue emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator) clattering around in our unfortunate car port glass roof trap today – normally they’re only around earlier in the season 🧐
Anyway, managed to catch it the filthy (sorry) glass I keep outside for this purpose & take a quick phone picture – now it’s freely patrolling the neighbourhood again 🙂👍
I rarely upload video here for all the well-known reasons 😬
I'm making an exception today though, as few things make me happier than seeing a squadron of ten or more dragonflies patrolling our garden, as they were this morning 🐲🪰
Very likely migrant hawkers (Aeshna mixta) as they do this every summer, but I'll try & get a close-up photo in the coming days 📷
Every year it's the same story – the migrant hawker (Aeshna mixta) dragonflies arrive in July hunting en masse, but refuse to land for even a moment, making photos nigh on impossible 🤷♂️
And then around the start of August, they start perching & allow me to get very close 👁
So here's a male that was making the most of the post-rain sunshine this evening 🙂👍