Another Tricky Bug

I tried wandering Broadmoor again Thursday with no great results. On the way out on 16 I parked next to the Charles River at the Natick Historical Society. There's a small grassy picnic area right by the river. There are also numerous dragonflies right at the edge of the river. A few twelve spotted skimmers fluttered about and one widow skimmer. The widow skimmer landed a few times and I stalked it about. Eventually, I switched to a high iso and put the zoom lens on just to give me a shot at a good image.

One of the Tricky Ones

You'd think with a name like Common Whitetail catching one of these guys in a photo would be easier. While I do see them practically everywhere getting them to land and stay down can be frustrating. The worst part is they aren't always even reacting to me. This is just one of the dragonflies that tends to hop around. Now that I think of it the Common Pondhawk is quite jumpy sometimes as well. Maybe they got named common just because you see them everywhere, but can't get close enough to actually see what they look like.

An Old Standard

Slaty Skimmer - male

Just a slaty skimmer male. They're easy to photograph and ridiculously common. The only dragonfly I have more photos of is the blue dasher. It has gotten to the point where they have to be lined up perfectly for me to even bother photographing them.
This of course has a huge downside. I've found in some of my old pictures before I was paying attention to dragonflies that I've photographed a few species I haven't seen again. At this point I should be photographing everything and sorting out the images at home as you never know what you actually got until you research.

My Holy Grail... of Dragonflies

12 Spotted Skimmer - Male

I've been going on no hikes all summer, mostly due to work. Yesterday I got up early for something else and decided to suck it up and put my camera in the car. I went a few places, but only Broadmoor had anything I liked, even though I had to keep dodging the kids at camp who were all over screaming into the woods. At least I wasn't trying to look at birds, it would have been impossible with all the shrieking.

It was around ten in the morning and the usual suspects lined up along the Quacking Frog trail between Glacier Hill and Old Orchard Trail. It's the edge of a field with the sun shining into a set of shorter brush and trees and you can find dozens of dragonflies sunning there in the mornings. I picked my next trail about the time the camp caught up with me and wandered to the wildlife pond, which has grown huge and eaten parts of the meadow and killed off the trees that used to line it. The trail close to the pond was closed, but I found this dragonfly sunning himself about 6 feet off the leftover trail. I also almost stepped on several frogs as the footing was a little flooded.