Late summer is the time for dragonflies and this beautiful 12-Spotted Skimmer paused for a few seconds during its hunt for prey to indulge me in a photo op in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, NYC.
We easily see hawks command the skies looking for prey. But there’s a small world nearly unnoticed in a garden built for #biodiversity. Here, a female Widow Skimmer Dragonfly perches quietly on a spent flower stalk from an Asiatic Lily, looking for mosquitoes near my pond. By the time they see her coming, it’s too late. Hawk in miniature.
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.
Made a friend of a gorgeous dragonfly this week - been in the garden for the past few days. Today it allowed me to take some great footage close up on my phone. Managing to observe it up close was all kinds of awesome. Nature is so amazing. #Dragonflies#Insects#NaturePhotography#Nature#Photography#Garden#Dragonfly
"Erythemis simplicicollis, the eastern pondhawk, also known as the common pondhawk, is a dragonfly of the family Libellulidae, native to the eastern two-thirds of the United States and southern Ontario and Quebec, Canada. It is a dragonfly of ponds and still waters. The species is distinguished in that the female is bright green with a banded abdomen and the mature male has a blue abdomen with a green face and green and blue thorax." -