Eastern Amberwing

[centuryplant]

This is an Eastern Amberwing dragonfly. They're tiny -- less than an inch long -- and usually, very flighty. I'd never had much luck photographing them until last year, when I found this one sitting on a stick at the edge of a lake. He'd clearly decided that part of the lake was his breeding territory, and there weren't any other perches that would bear his weight, so while he did fly away a few times, he always came back to the same place. That was his stick and he wasn't going to give it up -- not for me, not for the family with the very large dog splashing around nearby.

The sun shining through his wings made a ghost dragonfly on the sand.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

Oh, lovely. Have you seen this dewy-eyed dragonfly?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1260946/

[centuryplant]

I have seen those and they're amazing, although either the photographer or the paper managed to misidentify almost everything -- the "dragonflies" are all damselflies and the "moth" is a Lycaenid butterfly.

The way the dewdrops magnify the ommatidia in the eyes is really cool.

[thistleingrey]

Wow--in the first shot it's almost as though the dragonfly is wearing a little Gingko biloba cloak.