Scale

[centuryplant]

Dusky Clubtails are brown-and-yellow dragonflies about two inches long. They look virtually identical to Ashy Clubtails, so for a positive identification, you need close-up photos showing the shape of small details, like a downward-pointing spike on the claspers at the end of the male's abdomen:

I was using the camera's LCD to zoom in on the claspers, so I never even saw this tiny white insect. It must have landed there for a moment and then flown away again.

Here's what the whole dragonfly looks like:

Comments

[centuryplant]

They're both handheld, though for the first photo I think I was kneeling with my wrists resting on my thighs, or something reasonably stable like that. Most dragonflies object to tripods and I don't much care for lugging one around, so I rarely bother unless I'm planning to photograph flowers.

Clubtails usually perch on the ground, so if you have a nice flat surface like a boat dock it's often possible to just set the camera down next to them, but this was on a weedy lakeshore littered with rocks and chunks of wood, so I couldn't make that work.