I’ve added about 70 photos over the last couple of weeks. Mostly birds, but there are also dragonflies and a few box turtles.
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Driving home after work one day last week, a small hawk came gliding low across the road in front of me. I was heading into the sun, so I couldn’t tell much about the bird other than he was too small to be a Red-tail. Watching him as he crossed the road, he looked as if he were making an approach to land in a tree a short distance from the right of way. I mentally marked the tree, drove the few hundred yards to the next cross-over between lanes and turned back to have a look. I pulled off on the shoulder and started scanning the tree where I thought he’d landed, but didn’t see anything. I started to pull back into traffic but decided to take one more look. This time I spotted him, higher in the tree than I’d expected and partially obscured by foliage. But through the binoculars, it was clear that he was a Broad-winged Hawk. Had he been a Red-tail, he would have been long gone. But Broad-wings aren’t generally that spooky and he was still sitting there ignoring me. With the passenger side window down and the motor turned off, I shot a few photos from within the truck. Now that I had a few photos, I got out and went around the truck and started shooting again. I was able to work my way to the left and get his head clear of the obstructing limbs.
He was still not moving, so I started walking through the Sericea lespedeza in his direction. Unfortunately, the bank dropped steeply away after a short distance and I could go no further. I was closer to the hawk, but the light wasn’t as nice as before and I prefer the images shot back near the truck. The background is more attractive.
I ended up with around 80 frames but since the hawk wasn’t moving more than turning his head, they’re all very similar. Still, it was well worth the trouble of turning back and taking the time to shoot. I had my 50th birthday back in May. Usually, Dayna and I go day-tripping on my birthday, looking for birds and a good place to eat. But this year found me out in the Powder Mill area, documenting flood damage.
At one stop, I saw something large and shiny in a little clearing back in the dense bottomland cover. I made my way to it and as I got closer it resolved itself into a 500-gallon propane tank. While photographing the itinerant tank I realized I was hearing a familiar song coming from nearby. I stopped to listen and realized I had a Swainson’s Warbler almost on top of me.
Fortunately, I was carrying two cameras. My D7100 with a 150-600mm lens was hanging from my shoulder, so I was properly equipped for this unexpected opportunity.
I was standing in a small clearing that actually had a bit of light, but the bird was back in the deep, dark cover. Taking a decent photo there would be essentially impossible so I needed to bring him to me.
I also had a Bluetooth speaker clipped to my belt loop and it was soon hanging from a low limb on the edge of the clearing. I was only planning to use playback for 30 seconds or so, but I only needed half that. By the time three repetitions had completed, a small brown missile came tearing out of the woods.
I tapped my phone to stop the playback, got the camera up and started shooting. The light still wasn’t great, but it was the best situation in which I’ve encountered a Swainson’s. He hung around for a couple of minutes and I kept the camera firing at its full 5 frames per second, ending up with over 200 photos.
Many were near duplicates of course, but I still had a veritable gold mine to dig through. This was my favorite shot:
The others are on Flickr if you would like to see them. Links are below. And Happy Birthday to me! I finally got off my lazy ass and mowed the grass around my pond for the first time since last summer. It was waist-high and keeping me from getting close to the pond, due to the number of ticks it harbored. But with it freshly mowed, I can get to the pond without worrying too much about the damned ticks. They’re still there—you can’t get rid of them that easily—but their prevalence has been much reduced.
Now that I had regained access, I carried a lawn chair to the pond’s edge and parked myself in the shade with the sun at my back. There were Common Green Darners (Anax junius), Slaty Skimmers (Libellula incesta), Spangled Skimmers (Libellula cyanea), and Common Whitetails (Plathemis lydia). There were also several species of damselfly, most of which I can’t identify without keying they out.
But the most common dragonflies at the pond are the Blue Dashers (Pachydiplax longipennis.) The males were all around the edge, flying about, engaging in miniature dogfights and staking claim to the most prominent perches.
The number of females is smaller or, I suppose, they’re just more circumspect. I only saw two of them, but there have to be more than that or the male/female ratio is seriously askew.
I hadn’t been sitting long when I noticed one of those females hovering a short distance away, dropping eggs into the water.
It was very bright out and I was able to use a very fast shutter speed, 1/2500th of a second I believe. Dragonflies only beat their wings about 30 times per second (a bee has a rate 10x faster), and that shutter speed was almost fast enough to “freeze” her wings.
She was there doing her thing and minding her own business when a male decided she needed his “assistance.”
They briefly joined to form a wheel and copulated.
Briefly, indeed, the male soon departed, returning to his patrols and battles while the female resumed to her duties.
Going through some of my older photos, preparing them for Flickr, I came across this image.
At the top of the screen, you have a pair of breeding Common Green Darners (Anax junius.) The female is ovipositing, placing eggs in the water beneath the pads. Darners typically stay on the wing almost continuously, making them difficult to photograph. But now they were an achievable target and I’d been following them around, trying to get close enough for a photo.
I didn’t notice the Six-spotted Fishing Spider (Dolomedes triton) feeding on a second male darner until I looked at the photo on the computer. I’m still trying to think of a scenario where a spider would’ve been able to catch a darner. That’s not a terribly large spider and darners are pretty robust. It had to have been an ambush situation where the darner landed for some reason and the spider took him by surprise.
I thought the breeding pair laying eggs and the other male dead and being consumed, neatly encapsulated the life cycle of the darners.
As soon as I saw the image, I thought of the only poem I’ve ever memorized, The Span of Life by Robert Frost. This poem is the very epitome of succinctness.
And to pull this post around to a proper ending, here are the remains of the darner once the spider had completed his meal. That’s assuming it’s the same dragonfly (it was in the same spot if I remember correctly) but it looks like something other than the spider had been munching on it.
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