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Early Meadow-Rue
I love the leaf wads this species puts up in spring—as if all its leaves have spent the winter balled up in a sock drawer.
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My buds
This year's spring has been late and compressed. When the May snows were finally over all the ephemeral wildflowers seemed to go off at once. I took a few obligatory flower shots, but I'm still more interested in buds and half-open leaves on trees. They have an amazing variety of shapes and textures, and since most wildflowers this time of year are white, they're actually more colorful. And I never used to notice them much, so I'm not used to them yet.
I am not good at identifying trees from their buds but I think this one is a maple.
( One more photo )
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Racket-Tailed Emerald
Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve is the best place I know of to find Racket-Tailed Emeralds near the Twin Cities. In particular, there is a lovely spot to watch foraging Racket-Taileds in the southeastern part of the park, but the trail to it goes through a low spot between two lakes that like to become one in spring. Luckily the nearby parking lot is also pretty good. On the day I took these pictures, I found 20 or so individuals perching on trees at the edge of the parking lot, but most of them flew away before I could get close. This one ignored me completely; she never moved, even when I got Pamela to bend away a sapling that was making a distracting bright line through the background of this shot. I started to wonder if I was taking pictures of a dead dragonfly. When I was finished and Pamela eased the sapling back into place, a twig brushed a twig on the tree that the emerald was sitting on, and she flew off as if fired from a slingshot.
( One more photo )
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Wild Asparagus
With its needle-like leaves, wild asparagus looks like a Charlie Brown Christmas tree -- a conifer so spindly it's surprising it doesn't fall over. At the end of summer, the little red berries hung all over it like ornaments reveal it as a flowering plant.
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I'm ready for my close-up
I had just gotten set up to take a picture of this Eastern Amberwing when he flew up from the horsetail he was sitting on and settled on another one closer to me. Then he raised his wings as I clicked the shutter.
( Two more photos )
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Bald-faced Hornet
I take a lot of pictures of insects on goldenrod -- mostly because goldenrod attracts a lot of insects, but also because I like green and yellow. What I don't like is the way the tall, top-heavy flowers tremble in every breeze. Sometimes, when the wind just won't stop, I resort to holding the camera in one hand so I can stabilize the plant with the other one. Of course the camera shakes more, but image stabilization helps with that, whereas it can't do anything about subject motion, so I think I wind up ahead. Pollinators are usually too absorbed in their work to notice what I'm doing. Unfortunately this one did take exception to me, so I only got one shot, handheld with one hand at 1/30 of a second, before it dropped off the flower into the grass. That shot had no business working at all, but sometimes I get lucky.
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Small worlds
Gray-Headed Coneflowers must be really juicy in late July. All these little brown stink bugs (Euschistus sp., I think) were crowding onto them while ignoring everything else on the prairie. I only found one on another plant.
( Lots of this )
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Orange Bluets
Most Bluet damselflies are blue and black and hard to tell apart -- in some cases it takes a microscope. Orange Bluets start out with the same color scheme, but turn a beautiful bright orange at maturity. Females sometimes remain blue, but more often become green or yellow; the one in this mating wheel is in mid-transition.
( One more photo )
Autumn Meadowhawk
I still think of Sympetrum vicinum as the Yellow-Legged Meadowhawk, because that's what it was called in the first dragonfly field guide I ever owned. In 2004 the Common Names Committee of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas decided the old name was too confusing, because as vicinum matures it changes from yellow to red, and the legs become reddish brown. The whole idea of having a committee that establishes official common names seems bizarre to me, but since most of these names were made up by the DSA in the first place and are no older than 1978 -- and since the old name really is kind of confusing -- I go along with it when I remember.
The new name reflects the fact that Sympetrum vicinum is an unusually cold-tolerant species. In Minnesota, if we don't get a hard frost, they can still be flying in November. It's very possible to see them perching near autumn leaves. But by the time the leaves have changed colors, so has the Autumn Meadowhawk -- it should be red, not bright yellow. Actually I took these photos in July and the leaves in the background are just dying.
( One more photo )
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Small slices of autumn
This has been a good year for fall color in Minnesota, since the oaks and maples have both gone off at about the same time. I suppose that's an effect of the drought, but it's pretty.
I took this photo from a hilltop at Murphy-Hanrehan with a panoramic view of prairie restoration ringed by trees. I'm no longer willing to change to a wider lens in the field because I have enough dust on my sensor already, so I looked for an interesting slice that the 100mm macro lens could capture.
( One more )
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Bee Fly
This bee fly really liked Rough Blazing Star. It started at the lowest flower, worked its way up the spike to the top, flew off, then came back and did the same route over and over. At the time I wasn't sure if I was seeing one fly or a succession of them, but the slightly damaged wingtips visible in several photos convinces me they're all of the same individual.
( Five more photos )
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Violet Dancer
This species is also known as the Variable Dancer because southern individuals have brown or black wings. In Minnesota we have only the clear-winged subspecies, Argia fumipennis violacea.