This seems to be the week of lucky shots (see the two posts below). The green darner dragonfly has been nearly impossible to photograph in the past. I have only one good picture of it, taken two or three years ago, when to my dismay it clung to a tree branch, perfectly still, for about an hour. All other times I’ve seen it, it flies constantly and rapidly – by far the fastest (as well as the largest) of all the dragonflies I see at the pond. I can go a whole season struggling in vain to capture the darner with my camera.
Yesterday, the brilliant, light blue body color of the male darner caught my eye as it sat in the old and new grasses alongside the pond’s edge. Looking closely, I could see that it was attached to a female, in a way that reminds me of the refueling of a jet, mid-air. Research tells me that at this point the mating for reproduction has occurred and the attachment is to serve the purpose of keeping any other male from mating with this female. I get the sense this has more to do with keeping pure the gene pool than possessiveness!
The female’s tail end was busy going from side to side in the water, laying their eggs. At times, the dragonflies would alight, reverse direction in the air, then set down again and continue the process.
(Click on the images for full-sized viewing.)
SilverLining 